I'll Follow the Sun
by Wakebytheriver
Summary: What if Alice and Jasper had never intended to return? The battle occurs and Jacob and Renesmee are forced to run for their lives. Alternate ending to Breaking Dawn. Rating is for language, violence, and sexual situations.
1. Chapter 1

_Hello, thanks for reading. I began this story about 2 years ago, but never finished. Its been on my mind lately, so i thought i'd post it. If i get some good reviews, i'll keep going. _

_There may be some confusion on a few points. First off, i changed "Nessie" to Remy for a variety of reasons. There is an in story explanation, that will come later._

_This story is sort of the direction i was expecting things to go while i was reading Breaking Dawn. Essentially, this is for those of us who thought that there should have been more to the ending. :)_

_Also, some of the dialog is a little out of order from the book, but it wouldn't make any sense otherwise._

_Forgive my changes and enjoy._

* * *

><p>I could hear every word. We all could. It sounded as though they were right beside me. No one needed extra sensitive hearing or the ability to mind read to know exactly what was happening in the center of the snowy, would-be baseball field.<p>

"You've got to listen to me, Aro. She's not what you think she is."

There were well over seventy vampires here, plus sixteen wolves. Every set of eyes was watching either the pair who argued in the middle, or the child that they'd come here for.

I was busy watching the rest of them- the mass of bloodsuckers, chomping at the bit to rip apart a little girl and everyone who protected her, including the mother who held her tightly and the father who was pleading for her life.

_Wanna get a little closer, Jake?_ I heard Sam thinking.

I heard a deep sigh from the person next to me. I looked at Sam and shook my head.

_No_

Someone had to stay beside Bella. Her new family was here, but I knew how she'd feel if I left her side. She was too preoccupied for conversation at the moment. Like everyone else, she was watching her husband negotiate with Aro. She stood straight as a stone pillar, but her wide eyes betrayed her stillness. Remy was the same. She didn't squirm in her mother's arms. She watched patiently from behind Bella's hair with no sign of fear, except for the tight grip she had on Bella's collar. I wondered why she wasn't cold.

It bugged me that this was Remy's first time in the snow. When I first found her that morning, she'd been staring out the window, watching in wonder as the snowflakes floated down. She should be attacking her uncles with snowballs, not watching people argue over her.

The moment I looked at Remy, it was hard to tear my eyes away, especially when she suddenly looked at me and a comforting smile curved up her full lips.

Bella didn't notice our stares.

Beautiful Bella with her honey eyes and bone white skin. Her lips were in a hard frown, but the seriousness only added to her enhanced beauty. Being a vampire truly suited Bella. She looked taller, her figure was more proportionate and her face was more angular and perfected-it would stay that way until the end of time.

I'd thought she was perfect before the change, but she never believed me. I found it very sad to think that losing her humanity was what it had taken to get her to have a little faith in herself. At least the faith was finally there. It was obvious. Even in the face of death, she was confident, especially now that she was sure she was as strong as her husband, who had taken her humanity in the first place. The change had given her full knowledge of her hidden potential and while her capabilities might not match up the army before her, she was ready to fight, to expend her power to the last drop. She was already using her concentration to protect the thirty of us on her side of the field. I couldn't see the bubble, but I could feel where it was.

"Bella," Edward called taking me from my thoughts, "Why don't you send Renesmee over here."

Bella took a step forward, but stopped short when Edward put a hand up. He seemed calm enough, but there was something weird about his gesture. I wondered which hungry bloodsucker's thoughts he was hearing.

He gave her a half smile, "I think it'd be best if she came on her own"

That was it. He knew something.

"Not on your existence," Bella replied in her musical voice.

_I won't go all the way._ I hoped he would pick up the signal. I stepped in front of Bella and made the best sound for "trust me" that I could. It came out as a low whine. She looked at me insulted, then raised her eyes to Edward. I could see beyond the shock and into the betrayal she felt. It was not enough that she be asked to surrender her child, but now her best friend and her husband appeared to be conspiring against her.

"Come on, Bella," Edward said in unison with my thoughts, "I won't let anything happen to her."

She replied with a glare, which he returned. Then something changed. Somewhere in the first minute of their ocular battle, an understanding passed between them. I wondered for a second if, in all her training, she'd picked up some mind reading, because he was saying something to her that no one else understood and she was receiving it loud and clear. Her eyes softened suddenly and a look of defeat hit her face. She turned to me and it broke my heart to see the pain in her eyes. I wanted Edward to just come out with it. Whatever the problem, it couldn't be worth what he was putting his wife through. His stoniness towards her made me want to start this fight with him.

I felt my pack start to widen their formation. They'd sense my anger and were getting ready to close in. They would wait til I gave them the signal, but they wanted it to come soon.

_ Sorry, but we're waiting this out. They strike first, but once they do, don't hold back._

A flood of voices came into my head. Sam and I had opened our minds completely to each other and his connection came with everyone who was connected to him. I could hear the fifteen other wolves like they were my own pack. Sam had opened the line because he insisted that they were.

_Not a problem._

_ Ha! No way._

_ God, I hope they attack soon. _

I tried not to laugh at their impatience. This was going to be dangerous. There was a good chance that some of us wouldn't make it through the fight. Luckily, Leah agreed with my need to take it seriously.

_Hey! _I heard her shouting in her head, _Quit your whining. Jacob says we wait, so we wait!_

There was a sudden quiet in my mind as they all fell in line behind Leah. I couldn't have asked for a better second.

_Thanks, _I told her, then turned back to Bella, who hadn't noticed the scuffle behind her.

"You'll run," she said so softly that I was sure no one else heard-hell I could barely hear it myself, "the moment he tells you. You'll run?"

Why did she have to trust him so completely?

I nodded.

"I love you, Jake. Thank you."

I leaned against her shoulder, wondering if she'd ever truly know how much I cared and how grateful I was for what she was doing.

She pulled Remy away from her body so she could look the child in the face, "Is this what you want to do, baby?"

Remy studied Bella for a moment, then reached over and took her mother's face in her hands. Bella let out a choked sob. I knew she was wishing that she could cry properly.

"Do you know how much I love you?" she asked.

Remy reached out as far as she could go and proclaimed, "THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS much!" Then she threw her arms around her mother in a big hug.

Despite her sadness, Bella laughed just a little bit. And who wouldn't? I did for a second. Not because it was at all funny, but because anyone who knew this family like I did, knew that the only one who could break that kind of tension was Remy and she pulled it off beautifully. Bella held her for another long minute, then kissed her cheek. Slowly, she eased her daughter's arms from around her neck, and set Remy on my back.

I felt a tug on the fur between my shoulder blades where she held on. I gave Bella a final nod, then turned and walked to the center of the field where Edward was waiting with Aro.

Within the first few steps, Remy leaned froward and put her hand on my head, stroking along my neck and giving me questioning visions of everyone's faces. She knew enough to know that she was in danger-that we all were- but the details were fuzzy.

I wanted to stop. I wanted to pull over and explain everything. I wished that her unique power went both ways so that she could pull the information from my mind. She was smart enough. She would understand.

Looking ahead, I saw Edward smiling in a way that I only saw when he looked at two thing: Bella and Remy. It was rapturous the way he looked at his daughter. When she realized who we were going to, she began bouncing with excitement.

I gave Edward a good twenty foot berth, then laid flat so that Remy could climb down. As soon as she was on the ground, she came around my side and stopped in front of me so that she was the only thing I could see. Very slowly, with the grace of a ballerina, Remy leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose.

I felt nervous watching her go. It was hard to ignore the ever growing impulse to follow her. Being near her had become my second nature and I wanted to see her safely to the other side. The fact that she was going to her vampire father didn't ease my worry. I glanced up at Edward, expecting his attention to be at that last thought- he usually picked it up when I was insulting him- but his mind was completely on Remy.

She'd crossed about half the distance when Edward suddenly crouched down onto the balls of his feet and the tips of his fingers, like he was about to pounce. There was a very expectant grin across his face. Remy stopped in her tracks and for a moment her mouth was open in an obvious gasp. Suddenly she returned the grin and crouched down into the same position. Again, I had to laugh. Edward was smiling widely, but he was still a hundred times more intimidating than the toddler. She was so excited by what was coming that she could barely contain her giggles.

As much as I enjoyed seeing Remy in this state of delight, I couldn't understand why Edward would choose a moment like this to play. Bella seemed confused too, as did most every face in the circle. Aro was one of the few exceptions. He must have seen this game when he and Edward shook hands.

_This guy's weird, _said Brady

We all chuckled a bit, even Leah.

_ I like it though,_ said Seth, _I mean, if you're about to die, you may as well have some fun first._

Remy and Edward were motionless in the silent circle. Suddenly, like a starting pistol went off, they were flying forward. Remy had barely taken a step before Edward was in the air, diving toward her. In a split second, they collided. He took her by the waist and turned quickly so that when he landed he was on his back in the snow and she was extended in the air over his head. She was spread out onto his hands in an airplane position, laughing so loudly that it was infectious.

_I think I see what you mean, _said Brady. Had this been any other moment, I would have been busting up with the rest. Even Bella had finally cracked a smile. It was then that I noticed that she had an arm around her middle. It had been over a year since I'd seen her do that. Of course she was doing it now. The three people she loved most in the world were the closest to the enemy. With the smile on her face, I wondered if she even realized that she was doing it. The only reason that she didn't have both arms around herself was because Esme had one of her hands. It was good that someone was there to take my place.

The entire mood of the field was slowly lightening to the sound of Remy's giggles. Her bronze curls were falling into her face and she was practically inhaling them as she laughed.

In a blink, Edward was on his feet, his face overjoyed as he held Remy. She pulled the hair out of her eyes and said, brightly,"Hi Daddy!"

"Hi, baby," he replied.

They went to Aro who remained alone in the middle of the field with a rather inquiring expression. He didn't seem to know what to make of Remy, or her overly affectionate father. It was obvious that such displays of love were uncommon in Volterra. He gave a questioning look to Bella, expecting an explanation for her family's behavior, but she just shook her head and kept watching.

I remained tense on my feet. The vampires behind Aro didn't seem nearly as curious. Caius was flexing his fingers from splayed to fists over and over.

"Hurry it up Aro," he called. I growled menacingly at him, annoyed that he didn't back down. Caius called Marcus back and the two of them spoke in breathing whispers.

I took a couple of steps closer, but couldn't make out what they were saying.

_Can anyone hear them?_

_ They know that Bella's blocking them,'_ it was Quil who answered_, 'they're still planning to attack and they'll go for her first._

_ That's why he didn't want her out there, but why let the kid get that close?' _asked Collin.

I considered this as I watched Edward and Remy approach Aro.

_He thinks he can change their minds, _I realized,_ He's hoping Aro will see reason and stop the fight.._

Quil shook his head, _It won't work. No matter what, they're going to attack._

_Alright, Collin, Sam, Jared, close in around Bella. Try to keep her from noticing you if you can. Everyone else, stay where you are. If you're in the woods, try to get closer._

_ They'll still smell us._

I'd thought about that and realized the futility, _It won't matter, if they're going to attack anyway. No one has the element of surprise. Just be ready._

They moved into position just as Edward stopped.

"Aro," he said meaningfully, "this is my daughter, Renesmee."

Though Aro's face remained undecided, he replied politely, "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Remy looked at Aro in mild surprise then turned the full effect of her smile onto him and reached out a hand. Poor Aro, I thought as he beamed back at the beauty before him, he never had a chance. He loved her already. Anyone would.

"May I?" he asked Edward, smiling at Remy, and never looking away.

"Looks like she wants to meet you, too," Edward replied. He leaned Remy forward so that she could touch him. They stood still for over a minute. I'd always assumed that thought transfer was an instantaneous sort of thing. I wondered now if Remy had any control over what she showed him. She'd always chosen very carefully what she wanted to show us. If by chance she'd gotten the ability to block power from Bella, perhaps she could edit which thoughts she wanted to him to see. Though even if she could, I doubt she would have kept anything from him. She would have shown him anything and everything that would protect the family that she loved.

When Remy dropped her hand and leaned away, she had a very proud expression on her face. She wrapped her arms around Edward's neck and laid her head against his shoulder.

"Good job," he said quietly. Aro had turned back to his brothers and Remy was buried deep in his jacket, so I was the only one who could see the fear in Edward's face. He was staring into space with a very tight jaw. I could tell that someone was projecting thoughts that he would rather not be able to hear. He caught me looking, but neither of us turned away.

I noticed suddenly how quiet it had become. Taking my eyes away from Edward's annoyingly tortured soul, I saw that about a third of the bloodsuckers that the Volturi had brought were gone. The ones left were eying the trees. I could feel the tension in my pack as some of the vampires passed by just a little too close as they left.

_Easy guys, _I told them.

_Do you see how those filthy leeches are looking at us? Disgusting!_ Embry was using all of his concentration fighting the urge to attack.

_ Seth, go after 'em. Make sure they don't hunt in town._

_ Got it._

_ Don't fight if you can avoid it. Just scare them off._

Seth left us to follow the vampire's snow tracks.

I turned back to the field. The moment he had my attention, Edward mouthed the word, "soon."

_How soon?_

He didn't answer. Instead, he tightened his arms around Remy and buried his face in her curls. The end was coming and he knew that this was the last time that he would hold his daughter.

By the time Aro had finished with his brothers, a dozen more vamps had left. That didn't bother me in the slightest. It was better odds, but thirty to fifty four was still less than ideal.

As Aro approached, Edward's eyes shot open.

"Come here, Jacob," he said. His voice was steady but there was fear in his expression. Something bad was about to go down and I wanted Remy out of there just as much as he did. I'd almost reached him when he suddenly threw a hand out my way and cried, "Wait!"

A boulder slammed into me and I felt my shoulder crack. I cursed and howled at the same time. I should have heard the bastard coming at me. The vampire hit me hard enough that he bounced backward and fell to the white ground. I recovered first and jumped on him before he could get to his feet.

I'd never had the pleasure of taking down a leech so completely on my own. It was disturbingly easy. While fifteen voices yelled their outrage in my head, another two dozen protested in my ears.

I sank my teeth into the vampire's neck, My jaws broke through the granite skin, ripping it apart like it was made of wood. Within moments, I'd bitten through the last sinew of his esophagus and his head rolled to the side. I took the head in my teeth and with a snap of my neck, threw it far into the woods then abandoned the body- someone else would have to take care of it. I needed to get to Remy.


	2. Chapter 2

Chaos had exploded around me. Everyone left in the circle had taken at least one opponent. Every fight was a physical one which meant that Bella's power was holding.

Edward was fighting one handed with Remy under his arm. He was grappling with one. and two more were surrounding him. I jumped onto one from behind, doing to him what I'd done to the first. Even without a head, these creatures were dangerous, but without eyes and ears they lacked direction. It would be enough for now to keep them confused. My shoulder swelling, I raced to the next who was behind Edward, trying to snatch Remy out of his arms. I was about to spring when Bella came forward and attacked. The hold on her power stayed strong as she clawed at the vampire who was after her daughter. She wrestled him to the ground, cursing and spitting and tearing bits off of him as she went. I stepped on his back, giving her the chance to get up.

"Thanks," she called, abandoning her opponent under my paws and running to aid her husband. As I took care of the vampire, she scooped Remy into her arms and ran for it. Edward followed moments later, throwing a head far into the forest like he was passing a football to someone over a mile away.

Six vampires followed.

I ran behind them, knowing that Embry and Jessica Hallow, who had changed not three days before- five other Quileute kids had become wolves in the last week, the youngest was nine years old- were waiting just beyond the trees. Sure enough, by the time I'd found them in the forest, there was only one left for me. The moment, he was in pieces, Bella and Edward appeared next to me. She put Remy on my back and shouted, "Go!"

I'd expected them to go back to the clearing where the fight was happening, but the moment I took off, they were running at either side of me. I yelled my question to Edward, but he didn't even acknowledge it. Suddenly, he and Bella glanced at each other and sped up.

I hadn't fully appreciated anyone's comments on Edward's speed until I saw how quickly he and Bella got ahead of me. They were soon out of sight.

I stayed on my southern path, not quite sure of where I was headed. Remy stayed attached at my neck, hardly moving as I raced through the forest. I was impressed with her. She hadn't panicked, or jumped off of my back to be with her parents. She trusted me and she loved me. As long as she was with me, I would not stop running.

I darted through a shallow stream, splashing her with water, but she didn't complain. I jumped over a log, but even wet, the freezing winter wind didn't bother her. I went over, around and through every obstacle and she stayed securely on my back.

I couldn't understand why no one was following us. Remy, myself, Bella and Edward were the most sought after people in probably a hundred miles. Where was everyone?

After another mile, I heard the sound of a brawl on my left. Another half mile and I heard it again. Three miles up there was a clearing ahead where Bella and Edward were wrestling with seven leeches who'd run into the forest before the fight started. I knocked one to the ground, ripping its head off with ease, then turned to the next.

"No!" Edward yelled, pulling out a silver lighter and setting fire to the broken bits of stone flesh. A heavy smoke immediately rose from the pile of granite limbs and heads. I followed the smoke up where I saw another dozen purple clouds making their way across the sky.

"Keep going," Bella yelled at me, as she threw the last of their opponents whole into the fire.

I didn't argue. As I pushed through the trees, I saw with a final glance, Demitri burning in the purple flames.

I didn't want to run like this. Bella was strong, but not very experienced. I was forced to put a lot of faith in Edward and that made me wanna hit something. But this was more than just about Bella. I was leaving my pack to save Remy. Would the packs come back together now that I was gone? I hoped so. Sam would be in control of both, or maybe Leah would take over since she was my second. Neither would fail, but still I hated to run.

I wondered when the mental connection would break. It had happened so quickly last year. Maybe it was because this time, I wasn't giving them up. I was choosing to run, but I couldn't get them out of my head and didn't want to. They were my brothers, my friends and my only link to what was happening back in the field.

Through their eyes, I could see a lot of vampires in pieces, but matching them up to any that I recognized wasn't easy, especially when I was trying to navigate a slightly less familiar forest. We rarely scouted this close to Seattle.

I could still hear fighting in the trees but no one had attacked. I realized that Bella and Edward weren't running or seeking out the deserters of the fight. They were clearing us a path. Bella's power was still around me, so I kept going.

Suddenly, as though a light had gone out, Paul's thoughts disappeared. It was like I'd lost a sense, or running with one less limb. I snarled loudly, but the only one who heard was Remy.

How did this happen? I should have been there.

Paul was on his side near Quil, whose eyes I was seeing this through. The white-haired bloodsucker, Caius, stood above him, with a red ring around his mouth. Immediately, the eyes of every wolf present turned to the ancient leech. A cry from Seth's mind answered my snarl. Then one came from Collin, then Leah, then Sam and Embry's came at the same time. By the time it reached Jared, it had become a rage filled war cry. Even from the distance, I could feel the rumble that built in their chests as their growls became angry barks. Strangely, and though I couldn't imagine why, every vampire who'd come to witness for Remy, every one not occupied at that very moment, came to surround Caius. This was not the first death on our side and it was a wolf that had fallen. Still they came to our aid. I never thought I'd be grateful to be on good terms with vampires.

Caius was in a thousand pieces inside of a few seconds and thanks to the Egyptian, those pieces were burning. Benjamin- the Egyptian elemental- was making himself extremely useful. When there was a vampire without a head that they couldn't corral into the fire, he opened a hole in the ground and buried them deep enough that escape would take hours.

Amidst the rage in my brother's minds, I felt a great sense of unease in Seth. No vampires had gone through Forks and he was getting impatient. In a split decision, he headed for the fight.

_No,_ I called, _You hold your position. Someone has to protect the town_.

A moment later, I saw the reason for Seth's anxiety. As Embry ran toward Marcus, ensuring that he join in Caius's fate, I saw a scrap of flesh on the ground.

_Sorry, _Embry thought in condolence, keeping on his path to Marcus.

Carlisle was dead.

I didn't want to think about him as I ran. I didn't want to know what part of him I'd seen wrapped in the blue striped shirt he'd put on that morning, now burning in purple flames. I didn't want to think about how he'd died, or what Esme was feeling, or if Edward knew and if he'd told Bella.

For the first time, I made myself look closely at the battlefield. Half of the enemy had been taken down and nearly a third of us were gone, leaving the odds with the Volturi. I hadn't bothered to learn the names of most of my vampire allies, but I knew that two of the Irish, the Denali male, the sister of the spy, Irina, and the nomad Garret were among the dead with Paul and Carlisle. Benjamin was using his unique power to pry five vampires off of his mate. Roots from the earth were closing around them, pulling them apart and then underground. He ignited those that he could with his thoughts. A fire had just began on the back of Aro's long back robes.

Meanwhile, Emmet was pushing his way through the chaos to where Tanya and Rosalie were fighting back to back. Alec, tiny though he was, kept getting in the big guy's way. He was quick. Every time Emmet made a grab for him, he would duck out of reach and appear suddenly five feet away. Finally, he launched himself at Emmet, gripping his arm, and trying to sink his teeth in. Emmet grabbed him by the neck and with both hands, launched him into the moving tree roots that were protecting the Egyptian female. The roots took him and didn't let go.

Without warning, I lost Collin. Seconds later, Brady vanished with him, then Jessica.

I stopped. Remy started to fly forward, but she tightened her grip and I felt only a small bounce on my back.

_Jake_, Sam yelled in my head, _you need to go_.

Leah let out another angry cry when I didn't listen.

_We're fighting so you can escape,'_she screamed, taking a bite out of her opponent, _You better get the hell out of here!_

I heard her. I heard them both, but somehow, I couldn't keep going. The horror in my mind wouldn't allow my body to move. And where would I go if it could? I couldn't go back- I'd never make it in time and they'd all be pissed at me if I did, but the idea of going on and abandoning my brothers when they needed me most was more than I could take.

At the same time I knew I couldn't stay there.

_Jacob_, Sam reasoned with an irritating sense of calm, _You have to go and we can't come with you. Break the connection. We'll be alright. It's not as bad as it looks, here. You have a job to do, now break it, before I do it for you._

I still couldn't move. My shoulder was screaming and I felt like throwing up, like it would expel everything I'd just seen out of my head by way of my mouth. I tried to pick a paw up off the ground, but it seemed to be soldered to the earth. I tried the other, but it was my right leg and the pain in my shoulder shot through my whole body. So I stood there, not leaving and not disconnecting from the pack that I was supposed to be running away from.

Remy reached a hand up, keeping the other securely around my neck. Once again, she stroked my head, this time without showing me her mind. I wished she had. I would have appreciated the distraction.

"Jacob," she said in her little bell of a voice, "we shouldn't be here."

Something in my mind snapped when I heard her speak. Sam was right. I wasn't doing my job. There was a moment of the most serene clarity that made me realize the mistake I made by staying put. I took a step and then another. As I made the conscious decision to continue, it became suddenly silent in my head. The images of my remaining brothers vanished, but not in the same way as Paul and Brady. I was cut off. That didn't mean that they were dead.

I trudged on building to a light jog. I swore I would get Remy to safety or drop dead trying. The fact that I still felt Bella's protection was my one comfort. I wasn't out of her range, which meant that either she was still on my tail or that she was learning to expand the reach of her power as I got farther away. I really hoped it was the second option. Bella was an instinctual learner. The moment the fight had begun, the large protective bubble she'd created had burst and a piece of it surrounded each body that it had been inside it. That was why she'd felt confident in leaving. She was sure that everyone on her side would stay shielded.

I found a good step to run in and kept a pace almost as fast as the one I'd had before. I hadn't heard any battle sounds from the trees in nearly twenty minutes so I took my time crossing a deep brook. The freezing water felt good on my shoulder muscles.

The moment I reached the other side, Bella's power failed. There was no time to contemplate what that meant. I could smell a bloodsucker that I didn't recognize, but didn't see it anywhere.

What? Did this one turn invisible or something?

Before I found the leech, I was hit by a pain so strong that it knocked me to the snowy ground. Every nerve in my body was on fire. I tried to breathe in to scream, but just filling my lungs and feeling them expand was a pain beyond anything I'd ever felt. My body phased on its own, the explosion adding to the torture. I was glad that I'd broken the pack connection when I did. If my brothers had felt this, it would have incapacitated every one of them. Maybe that was the point.

A tiny female of a vampire stepped from the trees. I remembered her in the clearing, standing beside a small male and knew that she must be the twin, Jane. She stood above me as I rolled in the pain she was causing me, watching with an amused smile on her angelic face. I exploded again and she let out a tinkle of a laugh.

She had me helpless. My body was completely out of my control. The mindless pain had taken me over. My limbs flailed as the muscles spasmed.

I wanted her to end it. I wanted to die and would have asked if I could have found my voice. It wouldn't be long before my head burst from all the pressure of not being able scream. I phased back to a man and my ears were suddenly filled with what sounded like a chainsaw. I exploded again and the sound became a dragon roaring loudly and breathing fire. I had to time the sound with my phasing to realize that it was coming from my own burning vocal chords. The sound was filling my head. My eyes were wide, pleading with the little woman to kill me and get it over with. I was her enemy. I didn't understand why she didn't destroy me. She was still smiling at the horror on my face when she glanced at something behind me. Her smile widened and her eyes lit up hungrily.

Of course she hadn't killed me yet. She had other business here. I turned in the middle of a phase, unsure of whether I was a man or a wolf, and saw what had made her mouth water.

Remy had flown nearly ten feet from where I was writhing in the snow. My only consolations were that she'd had the sense to let go when I fell and that she hadn't catapulted back into the brook. Seeing her now, I realized that she hadn't let go by choice. She was rolling on her back, crying so loudly that I wondered why I hadn't heard her before now. I let out a roar at the sight. She looked up when she heard me and our eyes met. If there was one thing that could have gotten me to my feet while feeling like I was burning alive, it was seeing Remy in the same pain.

I was standing before the parasite noticed, ignoring the sensation in my already aching shoulder and the pain in the pads of my feet as I shifted my weight onto them.

The leech had already walked passed me and was nearly to Remy. I wouldn't let her get that far. I threw a bark at her and pulled my lip up showing my teeth. It was enough to get her to face me, but not enough to break her spell.

She let out another sweet, high laugh, "What do you want, dog?"

The pain immediately increased, and I phased to human

I concentrated everything I had- all the pain that she was giving me, all the rage I felt at seeing Remy on the ground, all the grief for my friends who'd been killed, and all the fear for those who were still fighting- and I channeled it into one final phase.

Once my body had become the wolf, I let it have me. I gave up rational control and allowed the simplicity of instinct to take over. The farther I receded into the depths of the animal, the less pain she could cause me. I forgot myself. My human life blurred and was replaced by the months I'd spent in the woods. I was a wolf and I had one purpose.

The last thing I head before I was under, was a tiny voice whisper my name.

I attacked.

It was like ripping apart a rag doll. The leech hadn't even tried to defend itself. It had been so convinced of its own power that it had never occurred to the creature that I could find away around it. I thrashed it around the trees and sent its limbs and head into the brook watching them wash away downstream.

I had just finished dismantling and burying its torso when I saw another. It was sitting with its back to a tree, cradling a crying child. A deep growl built in my chest.

I didn't care that the little girl was clutching to the monster as though she loved it and that it held her the same way like its cold arms could provide her comfort. I would kill it once she was safe. I ignored the fact that nothing about the creature suggested that the child was in danger. That was hardly the point. A small voice in the back of my mind recognized the scent that the creature gave off, but it didn't matter. There was adrenaline in my system and a strong sense of satisfaction from the last kill. I wanted another and the leech was defenseless. In fact, it hadn't even noticed that I was there. This would be all too easy.

I got an inch from its face and let out a bark so loud that the child threw her hands over her head in surprise. Even with my growls so close to its ears, the creature didn't look at me. It stared at the child and she stared right back, watching its face become more and more horrified. I barked again. Still no response. I nudged the girl on the back, trying to push her out from between me and my enemy, but she gripped the leeches hands tightly. Her expression was hard and her eyes brimmed with tears. I nudged her again, This time, she turned to me and put a hand on my nose.

The images she showed me said very clearly, "Snap out of it, Jacob!"

I blinked hard and looked at her again. Her hand was still on my nose. This time I saw myself lying on the floor, writing, screaming cuss words that I don't remember saying, and phasing repeatedly from and wolf into a man and back. She'd been showing the vampire the same thing, only she hadn't had to touch its face to make it understand everything she'd been through. I looked more closely at the vampire and it looked back at me.

It was Edward. If it hadn't been for his scent, I might not have known it was him. He looked like hell, like he'd just climbed out of the ground. There were twigs tangled in his hair and mud was caked into gashes along his face. The cuts looked like claw marks, like fingernails had raked across his head over and over again. His clothes were ripped and his jacket had gone missing, revealing a hundred more marks and a left arm that looked close to falling off. The limb was mending itself as I watched. Across his right eye was a crescent shaped scar. It was burning him and he was trying to keep the eye closed.

I'd never seen the man so ripped up. He'd fought hard for something and it appeared that he'd lost. I remembered suddenly the feeling of Bella's power as it cut off, leaving us open to torture. An image of Remy rolling on the ground came into my mind. I didn't want the memory, but now the thought was there and I couldn't get rid of it.

Edward's eyes narrowed, but he didn't break the stare. His face burned with fury. He assumed I was using the thought against him.

For someone who'd always stayed so calm and collected- even when threatening the loss of one of my limbs or the breaking of my face- it was almost frightening to see the hate smoldering in his eyes. Heh, almost. I didn't back up to his glare and I refused to apologize for the errant thought.

_Where's Bella?_

If possible, his anger increased when I thought his wife's name. Mine increased when he refused to answer my very simple question. He set Remy on the ground, then stalked off into the woods with an obvious limp in his step.

A loud snarl came out of me, _WHERE IS SHE?_

I saw Edward begin to fall. He threw a hand out and caught himself on a tree. My anger rose again at his blatant display of weakness. He would answer my question, I swore, or I would attack.

I left Remy's side and headed toward the tree, where Edward stood hunched over, clutching his chest like he was having a heart attack. Ha! Didn't he know that you can't have a heart attack without a heart?

_YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT HER!_

Very slowly- slowly for a vampire anyway- he turned to face me, standing firmly on his feet. He was the burning man from so long ago, only fear was not what fueled him this time.

"And you were supposed to be gone by now," he was hissing the words, "If you hadn't stopped in the middle of the goddamn forest like a moron, they never would have caught up."

My mouth foamed and my body shook as I seethed, _I always knew you'd kill her_.

A strangled, animalistic cry filled my ears. He crouched down just like he had when he'd played with Remy in the field. There was no mirth in his face, this time, only the same grim pleasure that I was taking. The opportunity to finally be able to do something that we'd both wanted to from the start.

"I'll kill you," he said darkly.

_You're just another leech_, I replied, with satisfaction.

Before I could strike, he vanished. He'd moved so fast to the top limb of the tree beside him that I thought for a second that he'd teleported up there.

I barked at him, screaming, _Get your bitch ass down here, parasite!_

He dove from the the limb, some twelve feet above me, catching my shoulders and shoving me backwards into the ground so hard that I felt my back snapping roots deep in the earth as I passed through them. I bore a path two feet into the ground, watching dirt and rocks spray up on either side of me. My shoulder felt like it had popped out of place.

Edward held me to the ground with his right arm across my chest while the flimsy left hand pulled itself into a fist. He used it to hit every part of my face and neck that he could reach.

I should have been able to throw him off easy. He was known for his speed not his strength. It didn't matter. Twist as I might to escape, he had me pinned.

I struggled against his blows, but I was still in a trench on my back. The slightest movement and my shoulder was ablaze. It would heal once I rested it, if I could rest it. My right front leg flopped uselessly at my side.

As hard as he was punching me, the muscles were healing in between blows. The blood from the inside of my cheek stopped flowing as instantly as it started. Had I been anything but a werewolf, I would have lost my head by now. He knew that. If he'd wanted to kill me, I'd be dead by now.

I snapped at him, trying to get my teeth around any bit of him that I could. Like before with the little female, he had me, his enemy, at his mercy. He could have killed me. His mouth was barely an inch from my throat. It would have been easy, compared to the granite skin that he'd spent the day ripping apart. But, he resisted. Also, like the female, he was concentrating more on bringing me pain than looking for an easy way to be rid of me. Every time I made a noise, or cursed in my mind about it, he took pleasure. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted to destroy me to the brink of death and leave me with as much hatred for the world as he had. Rage and grief had given his arms strength and just looking at me gave him the endurance to pound my face until it killed me.

Destroying Edward Cullen was not something I'd ever thought I'd lose at. I'd always planned to be the aggressor and the victor. Even now, under his fists, I was looking for a way to turn the tables. I'd been ready for this for the last two years, just waiting for him to say the right words, or do something heinous enough to compel me to drive my teeth into his neck. Now that the moment had arrived, it was not going as I'd expected.

I thought this would be easy.

A brief laugh of irony escaped him, and he said through gritted teeth, "I thought it would be hard."

I kept struggling, despite how useless it appeared to be. He was moving too fast and I still couldn't get ahold of him. Honestly, hadn't I been beat up enough for one day?

Suddenly, he was on his feet, like I'd burned him. Maybe I'd offended him. Good for me. I wasted no time once he was off me. He was distracted, searching the clearing, probably for Remy. I knew she hadn't moved from the spot where I'd left her. I could still smell her next the to tree that she was clutching.

I swung back onto my shoulders, ignoring the pain- I was almost used to it by now- then rolled forward, using the momentum to spring from my hind legs and put all of my weight into the attack. He still wanted the chance to kill me, right?

It only took one stone hand to knock me back into the pit. It wasn't even a fist and there was no force behind it. It just held there, fingers splayed like he was a crossing guard. One moment I was flying at him, the next, I was on my back again in the two foot trench. I leapt up and attacked again, from the side this time. Again, one hand against my chest and I was down, this time on my stomach and outside of the pit. Immediately, he was on my back, using my bad shoulder against me and making it even harder to stand.

He hit me in the neck, right at the top of my spine. He hit me hard. I fell flat into the snow, unable to move. I couldn't breathe. My heart even stopped for a few seconds. It came back weakly, but nothing else did. I tried to level out my panic, so I wouldn't run out of my last breath. Easier said than done.

"Calm down," Edward said irritably, jumping off of me, "it'll come back in a minute, after I'm gone."

_You paralyzed me, you parasite_, I yelled in my head, _That doesn't come back!_

He shook his head and crouched next to me crossing his arms over the tops of his knees, "You have a lot to learn about your own body, but I don't have time to stand around and tell you about it." Even as he said it, I felt my lungs draw in a slight breath. He continued, fury still in his face, "There are eight vampires on the way. They're all that's left of the ones that killed Bella."

My mind screamed. I wanted my voice back, now. I wanted to tell him all the ways that I blamed and hated him for bringing her into this. I yelled the words in my mind all of them coming in a wave of hateful thoughts and threats, one immediately after the other,

Edward looked down at his arms, thinking about the hate I was spewing at him. He looked up at me after a few moments and said in a strained voice, "Good luck, Jacob."

As he leaned in to say it, I noticed something that I'd never seen before, something I'd always been told was impossible. Down his right cheek from his burning eye to edge of his chin, was a faint red line; the product of more despair, rage and pain than his body could handle.

His eyebrows came together when he saw his face in my mind. He put a hand to the blood tear, then looked down at the red on his white fingers. He stared at it in disbelief. His body began to shake and I could feel his control ebbing away. His eyes closed and his entire face scrunched as he tried to hold in the cry of agony that fought to escape. After a few deep breaths, he relaxed. He looked at me again. There were no tears. His face was hard, but there was absolute torture in his eyes. After another glance at the blood on his hand, he rubber his thumb across his finger, wiping them clean.

He nodded to me, then stood and went to his daughter.

Remy was on the ground in a ball, her arms around her knees and her head down on her arms. She was trembling. He fell to his knees before her, like she was an idol to pray before, like she could take his horror and exhaustion away.

"Renesmee," he whispered. It took a second but she lifted her head to his voice. She looked at him for a long moment, then crawled into his arms.

I was ready for my body to come back to me so that I could rip him away from her, but the most I could do was twitch my back feet. I would welcome the physical pain, if it meant that I could stop him from what he was about to do. I couldn't let him take her and leave me like this for the eight vampires that were on their way. He couldn't take my daughter away from me.

That's what he never understood. No one understood that it felt like that. My instinct toward her was parental. I'd never looked to this girl to be my lover. It wasn't like I was sitting back and waiting for her to grow up. I loved everything about her as she was, just like her father did. She was mine by nature. She was mine because she wanted to be and because he'd given her to me. And now he held her, and he was planning to take her away.

I wondered what that separation would feel like. Would it hurt her, too? I hoped not. Honestly, I hoped that the eight leeches would kill me first. I would fight them. I would do my best to get my revenge for Bella, but if I died, it would hurt less than losing Remy. If I lived, I would find her and I would kill Edward.

_Just go._ She needed to be away when they got here, _you have what you came for. Get her out of here._

But he wasn't listening to me. His mouth was at her ear and he was giving her instructions.

"Keep your eyes closed," he told her, "and don't open them until you stop running. I want you to forget today. Don't think about it again. Don't remember me like this."

If she replied, I didn't hear it. She sniffed and tightened her hold around him. She didn't want to let go.

"I love you," he said in a thick voice.

He took her arms from around his body, kissed her forehead, then vanished into the woods to the north to meet the vampires that had killed his wife.

Remy cried out when he was gone, spreading out her empty arms. She called out for her "Daddy" in a broken voice, staring at the place were he'd disappeared, with wide eyes. Her lips were trembling and tears were pouring down her face. When he didn't return she sat down where she was, put her head in her hands and cried.

It was a few seconds before I realized that I'd regained my motor functions. The moment, I was up, I missed the numbness. I was bruised and my shoulder was still in agony. It would hurt a lot worse in the morning. I went to Remy and nudged her a couple of times. It took some convincing to get her onto my back again. I wanted to give her time, but there wasn't any to give. Those vampires would finish Edward quickly, and we needed to be gone before they reached us. When she looked at me, she looked a lot like her father. Her eyes were hard, but the tears had dried. She climbed aboard on my left side and put her arms around my neck. not as anxiously before. This time, she held onto me like she needed a hug.

We hadn't gone far when the sound of metal and stone being ripped apart filled the air. There were screams amidst it, but more than one voice. Remy understood, but she didn't cry. I thought she was being brave. I wasn't hopeful for Edward but, at the moment, I didn't care who got out alive as long as Remy did.

I ran from the clearing on three legs, bruised, bleeding, trying to bite back the grief for my best friend. The life I'd been building for seventeen years was behind me. The only thing I had left was on my back and I wouldn't let her be taken from me. I went south and finally, no one followed.


	3. Chapter 3

I collapsed nine hours later along the deserted north end of an oddly shaped lake from where I could see a dock and a small shop on the other side. I'd run almost a thousand miles, through two states and my body refused to take another step. Remy slid from my back and sat beside my nose.

"We're safe," she said and took a deep breath. She stared at the trees. New trees. New everything. I guess we would have to get used to it.

I didn't make the decision to phase lightly but I had to talk to her and my shoulder needed to heal in my human form or be rebroken so it could heal right. I laid flat on my stomach and changed.

"Are you okay?" I asked her. She hadn't looked around when I phased so I thought my voice would surprise her. It didn't seem to. Slowly, she nodded her head.

"Are you hungry?" I asked, "I could hunt for you,"

She frowned, looking suddenly miserable, "Don't leave, Jacob."

"I wasn't-" I stopped before I let my mouth ramble, "Rem, I'm not leaving you. I just want you to be okay. Let me rest for a few minutes and we'll hunt together."

Tears streamed down her face.

"Okay," she said in a little voice that was on the verge of choking.

Watching her cry didn't help my disposition. There was more than enough reason for both of us to sit here and bawl our eyes out. Remy's arms went around her waist- so like Bella- and she slowly slumped to the cold ground on her side next to me. Luckily, it wasn't snowing here just yet.

I put an arm out and pulled her close feeling her sob under my hand. I hadn't even lifted my own head from the earth and I was trying to comfort her. I let her cry until she had nothing left in her, letting my own tears pool quietly beside my head. Within minutes, she'd fallen asleep and I felt my eyes want to shut with hers. But I couldn't sleep yet. I would have to phase first. If someone were to stumble upon us, it would be a thousand times simpler to be found as a wolf asleep beside a little girl as opposed to a naked twenty-five year old man. Also, I couldn't phase until my shoulder was in one piece again. So I stayed human, and I stayed awake hoping to heal quickly.

Remy's soft snoring made my bruised face smile. She was facing away from me and for the first time, I noticed a small backpack across her shoulders. I took my hand off of Remy and pulled the zipper.

Wow. I rifled through the pack that was full to the top with cash, credit cards, ID's and two passports. My new last name was Wolfe. Heh...thanks Bella. I just wished she'd thought to throw a pair of shorts in there.

I rezipped the back pack and stretched my right arm. It was already improving. The bruises on my body were fading slowly. I wondered what sort of shape my face was in. I'd probably have to rebrake my nose to straighten it, but at least my jaw was still aligned. On top of all that, I was starving and dehydrated.

Remy woke three hours later, just about the time my shoulder was intact. I wish she could have slept longer. She must have woken in hopes that yesterday had been a dream.

"I'm ready to hunt now," she said quietly, looking almost ashamed.

"Okay," I replied, "Just keep your eyes on the ground. I need to phase."

She did what I asked and curled herself back into a ball where she sat. I phased carefully, not wanting to wrench my arm too much. It would be fine if I was careful. I let her on my back, then headed to the water. The whole time she'd been asleep, I'd felt the dry rough insides of my throat, every time I took a breath. But I wouldn't leave her side, even for the seconds it would take to hydrate myself. We went to the lake and I bent my nose in, drinking deeply. To this day, it was the best water I've ever had. I wanted to dive in and swim. The lake was amazing, even in the winter. The sun shone off of it, and the birds were singing loudly in the early morning. I could smell fish beneath the surface that I knew would not be difficult to catch. But there was Remy to think about. There were also a dozen boats on the surface, full of men after the same fish. We would go further south, until we were well off the path before we stopped to hunt.

A moment later, Remy leapt from my back and leaned over the water, drinking like I did. I couldn't figure out why. I was sure that it didn't taste very good to her. She drank anyway, just as heavily as I did, then dunked her head. Water sprayed in a lovely curve behind her when she quickly flipped her head back. I looked for a smile in her, but couldn't find one.

"Aah," she said, smacking her lips, her face not showing the humor of her voice. If the circumstances had been different I would have laughed. I was confused, but couldn't ask until I was human again. She jumped back up and hugged my neck again.

We found a small herd of deer four miles from the nearest hiking trail and dug in. I let her take down the huge antlered buck and I took the doe beside him. I don't think I've ever eaten so fast. Remy was scarfing, too. She'd ripped a hole in the animal's neck and was digging her face into it to get the very last drop. There was something unusual about it, though. She looked like she was chewing.

She was.

Why?

I whined at her and pointed my head to where she was eating the animal.

_What are you doing?_

She looked at me, trying a little too hard to act innocent. I went back to eating and let her get back to whatever she was doing. I would figure it out once I was human and could ask her. At the moment, the details were too much to think about. As long as she was fed, we could move on from here.

When we finished, Remy laid across my back, very full and sleepy. Across the lake, about thirty miles down I found a large town. Before we reached it, Remy was snoring on my back. There had to be a hotel in there somewhere. I wouldn't let her sleep in the dirt again.

It was winter, three days until New Years in fact, so there weren't many campsites around. The lake- Lake Shasta- had few tourists today, so stealing clothes to get into town was a challenge. At the very least, pants would be helpful. We finally found a boat that the owners had stepped away from. There was a change of clothes and a heavy jacket that hadn't been packed yet, so I grabbed them in my mouth and sprinted back to the trees before I was caught. They were too small, but they would have to do.

I checked us into a lodge on the east side of the lake. I felt bad for the girl behind the counter. She took one look at me and insisted on calling an ambulance.

"No," I pleaded with her, "I was mugged outside of town. We just need to rest. We've come a long way."

Her hand was on the phone when I pulled out a stack of cash from Remy's backpack and asked, "How much is it for a night?"

"Uh...rates start at sixty dollars," she told me, her eyes wide at the fold of hundreds.

"I just want a room," I said, as I handed her one of the bills. Nothing sounded better than a hot shower and a bed.

She ran a black marker over the hundred dollars, glancing repeatedly at the yellow line across it, then checked my Minnesota passport. I understood her suspicions. Why would someone mug me and not take a large wad of cash?

She should see how much I've got in here, I thought. I could buy this whole place if I wanted it.

The girl smiled and hit a button on the cash register that made it ding and open.

"Two queens, non smoking please and can I get an extra mattress pad or something? I want my daughter to be comfortable.'

"She will be, Mr. Wolfe. We have memory foam mattresses and down pillows and comforters. Would you like us to send up anything up for you?"

"Do you have room service?"

"Of course," she replied with a rather contented smile. She seemed more comfortable now.

"Two double cheeseburgers and an order of fries the size of my head. Oh and can you send that up at like seven? We should sleep first." I looked down at Remy and added, "Do you want anything, Kiddo?"

She cocked her head up at me, unsure of what I was asking.

"Did you like what you ate earlier?"

At this, she nodded enthusiastically. Again, I wanted a smile to match her hopeful eyes, but I was disappointed.

I turned back to the counter, "Get this kid, a big steak, still bleeding if you can."

The girl smiled wider, "There are some down the street that are still mooing, if she'd prefer."

Despite myself, I grinned at the joke, "She might."

My bruises must be healing. She found me handsome. She leaned over counter and winked at Remy, "I like my steaks rare, too."

She handed me a set of rooms keys and said, "Your room is on the second floor on the right. Just call down if you need anything. My name is Janelle."

I took Remy's hand and went to the elevator where Janelle had pointed.

How long had she been coming onto me before I noticed? She was cute. No one could deny that simple fact. Plus her blatant hospitality was an attractive feature in any woman. The fact that her thick blond hair and happy blue eyes were now an after thought, spoke volumes about the hold that the child beside me had over my mind and heart. If I hadn't noticed the flirting when I did, I would have forgotten Janelle the moment I stepped away from the counter.

My mind drifted back to a time that felt like years ago, when I'd asked Quil about dating. What a stupid question. I lifted Remy, my new daughter, into my arms and felt her curl up under my neck. By the time we reached room 204, she was fast asleep. I laid her in one of the beds, then flopped, arms spread wide, onto the other, I was out the moment my head hit the pillow.

Six hours later, Remy and I were sitting at the small circular table, digging into the meals that room service had brought. Janelle had added an array of juices for Remy and a six pack of a dark beer for me. There was a note with the beer from the lovely front desk attendant that said, "My favorite." Smythwicks. She had good taste.

Most of my experience with alcohol consisted of cheap lagers drunk around the campfire with my friends- beer, usually snuck from our parents' fridges. Of course, Sam had sprung for a few parties, but even then, it was mostly Vodka-brand-vodka and gatorade. After years of low grade booze, the Smythwicks was something of a treat.

Remy had ignored the juices until I popped a beer. She eyed the selection, then picked up the carafe of pineapple.

"Let me," I said, taking it from her and pouring her a glass. She sipped it slowly, her lips pursing together like it was straight lemon juice.

"Not your favorite?" I asked.

"I don't know," she replied, taking another bite of the steak, "I'd never tried it before."

"I thought you didn't like people food." I was prompting the honesty for her by playing dumb. I knew for a fact that she didn't like anything that wasn't blood.

She shrugged, not meeting my eyes, "Its different. Everything is different. Maybe I should be, too."

I wasn't entirely sure how to respond. If she wanted to try something new, I had no problem with it, but I was concerned about her motivation. I wouldn't be surprised if the last two days had left some trauma on her. Until we were settled, no questions.

"Here," I said pushing the fry basket closer to her, "you'll like those."

She nibbled at the end of one, moved the taste around with her tongue for a moment, then shoved the rest in her mouth. I handed her the bottle of ketchup when she reached for another.

"Try that."

She seemed to like it well enough that she had a few more with the ketchup then returned to her steak.

The moment we finished- everything, even the last of the juices- we went back to sleep. Remy crawled into bed with me as soon as the lights were out and we slept deeply through the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, a paper was delivered to our room's doorstep. I tore through the classified looking for a car. Sure, we'd be faster on foot, but if anyone was after us, we'd be harder to track in a vehicle. On the back page, in the last spot, I found exactly what we needed. Someone was selling a classic VW van for dirt cheap. We checked out immediately and hopped a cab to the other side of town.

The man selling the van made me nervous. He showed up to the door shirtless in the middle of winter with a joint in one hand, a dead cell phone in the other, and the dumbest smile on his face that I'd ever seen. Did this guy even know he was selling his van? Would he remember tomorrow?

He took me to the back of his house where a red VW van was in surprisingly good shape. The guy assured me that it ran, even got it started to prove it. No flat tires, good engine, even the alignment was dead on. I gave the guy what he asked, then offered him double to keep the van registered in his name for the next two years. He agreed, probably imagining how much pot he could buy with five grand, then handed me the keys.

The van was a good investment. It took us across the county line, through upstate Nevada, then up into Idaho and to Montana from there. We spent six months traveling the mountains and staying for weeks at a time in small towns. Remy made the suggestion to go back to Forks, but I knew we couldn't go near the place. If anyone had survived the battle, they wouldn't be dumb enough to stay in Washington. The foreigners would go home, but I had no interest in following them abroad. I wouldn't risk tracking them down, just to have them want vengeance for their coven members. Remy's family was the reason they'd gone to witness in the first place. I would never take that risk just to find her family of bloodsuckers. If we ran across them, that was fine, but we wouldn't go looking for them. Any of them.

Bella had put the words "Rio de Janeiro" on a paper in the bottom of Remy's bag, but we wouldn't go if we could avoid it. She wanted us to research the legends of the Ticuna people to know what Remy's fate would be. We'd been concerned about her fast growth rate and what would happen when and if the growing stopped. But there was no need to worry anymore. In the six months that we'd been on our own, Remy had slowed down. She was still advanced and learning like a prodigy anything she could- language, dance, piano when we could find one, plus she was reading at a ninth grade level- but she looked like a four year old, as opposed to the eight year old I'd expected her to turn into in that time.

A year and a half later, we'd given up our search of the north and went exploring in the Southwest for a place to settle, staying anywhere from a few days to almost a month in each place, but not really liking anywhere we stopped. Luckily, we had time to look. The slowing of her growth had leveled out to a normal rate. It wouldn't be so hard to blend in now. She was six now. That's what we told people, anyway.

The van's transmission went out in New Mexico in a town called Socorro. We'd just come from Phoenix on our way to Dallas when it suddenly refused to leave third gear. It coasted to a stop and I had to push it from there. Its a good thing I knew my V-Dubs. We were staying at a weekly motel while I waited for a part to arrive- I loved the classics and had a knack for them under the hood, but the parts were a pain in the ass to find and took forever to get. I spent three days, playing with the van, looking for things to fix on it, changing the oil, the fluids, the tires, the windshield wipers, the spark plugs, buffing out scratches, and pretty much detailing it from top to bottom.

On our fifth day stranded, I was underneath the van, detailing the undercarriage. I know that sounds a little OCD, but I was bored. Remy was asleep in the motel room and there was nothing on TV. I'd just about finished when I suddenly got the weirdest feeling. A force from about ten feet away was pulling at me. It felt like a sense I didn't know I had suddenly came to life. Something was standing outside the van, something that was not human. The feeling wasn't threatening, more invading, but I didn't know if I was in its space, or if it was in mine. I turned my ear to our room, listening for the sound of Remy's tiny snores. She was still there and no weird feeling was around her. I moved silently out from under the van, and took a quick glance around.

There were about twenty people scattered around the street. Most of them were walking around a little market that sold very fresh fruits and veggies. There were three men looking under the hood of the van, mumbling to each other in Spanish. They'd been standing there for the last hour, not one of them saying a word to me. They just watched me work.

The feeling came from directly across from me where a young girl of about seventeen was holding a bag from the market. She had black hair almost to her waist, rich, caramel skin, and green eyes that were wide as she stared at me. She was stopped dead in her tracks, obviously struck by the same sense that she'd given me. I opened my mouth to say something, and immediately, she gasped. The bag fell out of her hand, groceries spilling into the street. I jumped up and caught the head of lettuce that was rolling my way.

"Uh...here," I said unsure of whether approaching her was the right thing to do. She took it from me, a dark blush coming into her face. Just being this near, I could feel the insane heat radiating from her. She grabbed the rest of her groceries, with the sort of reflexes I hadn't seen in over two years.

When her bag was full again, she stood up straight, coming up to the top of my shoulder- taller than I'd expected. She opened her mouth awkwardly, about to say something.

"Lana," called a voice behind me.

The three men at my van were no longer paying attention to my engine. I wondered if now if they ever had been.

"Solana!" said the youngest of the three. He was shorter than the woman and about a decade older. He stared at her like he had a claim to her, "Vaya a casa."

Her wide eyes softened at his voice and she flashed a smile at him, "Si, Javier. El es un perro."

The three men turned to me suddenly, two of them looking at me like she'd told them a joke. The third, the one who'd spoken to her, was sizing me up like I was a threat. He turned back to her and said sharply, "Vaminos, Lana."

The girl gave me another glance, then followed the three men around the corner.

She wasn't a wolf. I would have smelled it on her. I could smell something, it was just impossible to place. The men she was with were human, but she was definitely was something new. She almost smelled like the mountain lions we used to hunt in Forks.

I finished with the van, then ran in to check on Remy who was still passed out on one of the beds. She woke while I was cleaning the oil from my hands.

"Jacob?" she called.

"What's up, Kiddo?" I replied, sitting down beside her.

She curled the blankets around herself and blinked sleepily at me.

"Are we gonna stay here for very long?"

She'd asked that question for the last four towns.

"Probably not," I said. Especially after the girl I'd just met, "That engine part should be here tomorrow. You still wanna help me install it, right?"

Auto mechanic was her newest trade.

"Yeah," she sighed, looking disappointed

"What's up, Remy?"

She sat up and hugged my arm, staring hopefully up into my face. She wanted something that she thought I'd say no to.

"Can I go to school?" she asked in a sweet voice.

I wasn't surprised. She was always asking for weird stuff like that, "Remy, you speak Latin, you're teaching me Algebra, and you read four novels a week. Why do you wanna go to school?"

I was working on my GED on the road. Math had never been my strong suit. I'd offered her the the same courses, but she hadn't been interested. What would compel her to go to a school where she could finish the year's coursework in an afternoon?

"I just wanna," she said, letting go of me and slumping back to the bed.

I took her in my arms, not letting her pout, "Look, we just move around too much right now. When we settle down a bit more, we'll talk about school."

"But why can't we just settle here?"

"Have you looked around this place? Its the epitome of the middle of nowhere. Once the van is fixed, we'll head out to Dallas and see what they have. If we like it, we'll stay for awhile. Deal?"

She gave a firm nod, and said, "Deal."

The next day, there was a package at the motel's front desk with the name Jacob Wolfe on it. The engine part had arrived. Remy had read all about 70's Volkswagen engines at the local library, so I let her do most of the dirty work. She came out from under the van, giggling and covered in grease.

I went hunting that night. Not the kind that I used to do in Forks. Remy had devoted her diet to human food and I preferred to not have to go looking for my meals. I scouted more than anything. Ever since a vampire in Wyoming, I'd taken nightly trips into the forest of wherever we were. I wasn't worried about leaving Remy alone. The reason I'd found that vampire was because it was trying to get into our room that night. It could smell us and had never encountered anything like either of us, so it came looking. Remy had both of its arms off before I'd even woken up. Luckily, our room had a fireplace in it.

So far, there had been no vampire activity in New Mexico. For all the supernatural hype that this state got, it seemed pretty boring to me. Maybe we weren't close enough to Area 51 or whatever. We'd be passing through Roswell on the way to Texas, maybe we'd see an alien.

It was almost four AM when I got back to our room at the Socorro Inn. I was outside the window, with my nose against it. Remy had closed the window after I'd left a few hours before. I hoped she was still awake. The curtains were drawn.

A waft of scent suddenly passed across my nose that made me turn back the way I came. I heard the curtains pull behind me and saw Remy in the window when I looked back. She looked tense, but strangely drawn to the scent. There was blood in the air. Human blood.

I barked at Remy to go back to bed. She glared at me, and I could see the craving in her eyes. She stayed at the window for a few more moments, then shut the curtain, still angry. I'd make it up to her later if I could.

I followed the scent to a rather remote section of the town. While most of Socorro was fast asleep, someone was yelling at the side of road that led toward the 25 freeway. I approached from in between two closely laid buildings, hiding in the shadow of the alley they made. Behind the buildings, a man stood over a large, tan animal. He brandished a kitchen knife and was screaming at it in Spanish.

The animal was doing its best to stay still. The long rope of the tail was flat on the ground, but the rounded ears on its large head twitched slightly as the man moved. There was a pool of blood below the creature and a number of wounds in its back. The man had stabbed it over and over again.

For all the yelling and blood, the animal didn't seem to be hurt. It wasn't trembling or afraid. It glared at the man as thought it would like nothing more than to rip his head off.

So why not?

It could have taken him down with one swipe. Why not just get rid of him?

The man waved the knife at it, bringing it close to the animal's face so that it could see the blade. He suddenly pointed to the knife and then to the creature, then waved his hand behind him, where an unconscious man lay on the ground. There was blood on the back of his head, but he was still breathing.

The man turned the knife in his hand so that he held the hilt in his fist. He was about to attack the animal again. Only it wasn't an animal. Not really. I'd been changing into a wolf for almost five years. I knew a shape-shifter when I saw one.

I felt a growl in my throat as I stepped out of the shadows. The man jumped at the sight of me. He held his arm out as far it would go, waving the kitchen knife erratically in my direction.

Like it would scare me.

I walked directly up to him and nudged him roughly with the end of my nose with enough force to knock him to the ground. The knife flew a few feet away. He was on his back so I walked up his body, my feet along his sides, and put my face down to his, letting out another low growl. Even though he was on the ground, he was still trying to back up. His face was in a silent scream as his fingers dug into the ground. I barked and he immediately fainted.

It would be counterproductive to kill him, I decided. As soon as I found a phone I would call the police.

I knew this man from that afternoon- he'd been the most critical (I think) staring under the hood of my van, also the youngest- so when I turned back to the beast behind me, I wasn't all that surprised to find it gone. A naked woman had replaced it. There was blood coming from a number of holes in her back and her breath was coming in shallow gaps. I looked over the ugly wounds in her back. None of them seemed too deep, but still she looked pained. She had the expression of someone who had not just been a giant cat.

I looked around at the buildings that surrounded us. No one looked from the windows, and no lights were on. The town was small enough that no one was coming down the freeway exit.

I phased and approached the woman. She was reaching behind her to the wounds, trying to check how bad they were. I gently wiped the blood that seeped from the holes in her back, checking for any sign that they weren't healing correctly. The moment my fingertips touched her skin, I noticed a tingling in her muscles, as if I could feel them stitching themselves back together.

"Crazy," I whispered, with a smirk.

When she was satisfied that her body was healing properly, she took a very deep breath, expanding her newly repaired lungs and letting the air out in a long heavy sigh.

She stood slowly. I used the opportunity to check on the guy who'd been unconscious when I got there. About five feet away was a monkey wrench that had been bent into a ninety degree angle. Blood covered the bent half. That's gotta hurt. Hopefully, an ambulance would come when the police did.

I caught the woman looking at me. She was crouched over the man who had attacked her. Every few seconds, her green eyes would glance my way, like she wanted to say something. Every time, I glanced back, she'd turn back to the man on the floor.

"He's gonna be okay," I told her.

She cocked her head at me, but didn't say anything. Instead, she pulled her hair over one shoulder and tried to crane her neck around to see the knife wounds in her back.

I tried again in my crappy knowledge of Spanish, "El esta...bueno?'

She looked alarmed when I said it. She must have thought I was a moron, which was convenient, since I was feeling pretty stupid. I wished I'd more paid attention in Spanish class.

"Yo...soy," I stammered, "Shit. This would be a lot easier if you spoke English."

At this, she laughed.

"Of course, I speak English, you idiot," she said, with no trace of an accent, "I was just marveling at how awful your Spanish is."

"Oh." Well...fuck.

"Is this almost gone?" she asked, turning around to show me back. The holes were closed and all evidence of them was disappearing.

"Not even a scar," I said to her clear skin.

"Good," she said, spinning back around to look at the men in front of us. She nodded to the one in front of me, "How is he?"

"I think he'll recover." The young man's bleeding had stopped and he his eyes were starting to flutter.

"You know him?" I asked.

"My brother," she told me, "He offered to get hit so that I could run for it. You blew my cover, you know. I wanted him to think that he killed me. That way he wouldn't come after me."

She lost me. I asked, "Your brother?"

"My husband," she said, looking down at the man in front of her. He was still out cold. When I'd been scaring the hell out of him, I hadn't noticed the gold band on his left ring finger.

She stared ahead of her into the lack night and said solemnly, "Guess, I'll just have to go anyway."

When she stood up, I almost reached out to her. I wanted her to stay and tell me about herself. I'd never met anyone who turned into something other than a wolf.

"You coming?" she asked, walking toward the open desert.

"I gotta get back to my kid," I told her, as inviting as running in the desert sounded.

She turned back to me and shrugged, "Okay, then."

"You gonna be okay out there?"

She nodded, "Its time to go. I can't get away with my age and my marriage has been over for years. I'll be fine. I have an aunt in Houston, who COMPLETELY gets what I'm going through, so I have a place to go."

"Houston?" I said,"We're going to Dallas tomorrow. You want a ride?"

"A ride?" she laughed loudly, suddenly carefree, "What do you think these legs are made for? I got some running to do."

The ride offer was my best chance to stall her. Since I was out of excuses, I stood and held out a hand, "Well, then, enjoy your run."

She took my hand and gave it the smallest shake, "I will."

We smiled at each other for an few awkward moments, then let go.

"Well, bye," she said, waving a hand and turning back to the desert.

She was fifty feet away and about to phase when I yelled, "I'm Jacob!"

"Lana!" she called back.

A second later, she transformed into a large cougar and disappeared into the night.

* * *

><p><em>So, if anyone is wondering why he would say no to her wanting to go back to Forks, or to stay in Socorro for school, my thoughts on this are that Jacob's state of mind right here is that of a parent. Her safety and well being takes priority over all else, even her wishes. <em>

_oh, and sorry if my Spanish is just as bad as Jacob's. :)_


	5. Chapter 5

Socorro was about the size of Forks, so it was unsurprising, to me, how fast news traveled.

When we checked out at 8am the next day, the woman at the counter was on the phone talking about the scandal. Apparently, Javier Gutierrez had been arrested the night before. When the police arrived, they'd found him raving about how his wife was a monster- not just a crazy bitch, but a true and actual monster. He was lucky to not end up in the loony bin. The police kept him for a couple of hours, then released him, citing the fact that there was alcohol on his breath and an eye witness who said he'd gotten tanked off of whiskey and passed out on the side of the road. When the police took him home, they found a goodbye note from his wife Solana, who had left her wedding ring, packed a bag and disappeared in the middle of the night. Javier and Solana's friends and families were now being asked by a detective if they'd ever seen any signs of domestic abuse. Why else would a married woman just up and leave so abruptly?

"She was too good for that pendejo anyway," said the receptionist into the phone, as she printed my receipt for the room, "I hope she's a long way away by now."

I signed the receipt just she continued, "He said something about her brother, too. I guess there was a bunch of blood when they picked up Javier and some of it matched Antonio's. They're over at his place giving him a hard time too." There was a pause, then she added, "No, most of it was Lana's."

I took Remy's hand and we walked out thew car, just as the woman let out a shriek of laughter and yelled, "Que chingados! You bitch!" We could hear her laughing all the way to car.

We took the 25 south for about 20 minutes, the transferred to the 380. It was 8 hours to Dallas. A month back, we'd stopped in Vegas, where I'd found one hell of a stereo upgrade for the van.; satellite radio, MP3 connector, surround sound speakers. We even picked up a plug adapter that connected to the cigarette lighter, so that Remy could keep her laptop charged which she would use to watch DVDs on the road. Driving had been a lot more comfortable ever since. I flipped on the radio to get a traffic report- yeah yeah, its an old man move. You try living 2 years on the road and not care about traffic- while Remy downloaded a movie to watch. According to announcer, it would be nice and clear once the morning rush ended and wouldn't back up again until about 5pm. Luckily, we'd still be pretty far out from a major city by then. However, as it turned out, we wouldn't make it to Dallas..

Two hours into our drive, I heard Remy gasp. I immediately pulled over. When I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, I inhaled the scent that had surprised her. Blood was in the air again and a lot more of it, this time. It was Lana, there was no doubt about it.

"Put on your seatbelt," I said. Remy pulled the strap across her body and grabbed hold of the "oh shit" bar. I checked behind me for oncoming cars. Seeing none, I reversed all the way to chain link fence that lined the entire stretch of highway, revved the engine, then tore across the road and straight into the fence on the other side. The van blasted a six foot gap in the fence as we plowed through it and into the hills beyond.

Within a few minutes, we were tearing a path through a thicket of trees. I realized too late we were in a national forest. We wouldn't have much time before the the rangers came.

When the trees got too thick to drive through, we jumped out and ran. The air hit us, and mixed with the blood, was the scent of a vampire. Luckily Lana was close. We found her in her cougar form, completely alone, surrounded by a tight clump of trees. The moment we were in sight, she snapped her teeth at us and roared loudly.

"Whoa! Whoa, it just me," I said, putting one hand up defensively, while using the other to push Remy behind me. She continued to snarl as I approached.

"Its just me," I said again, "this is my daughter. We could smell the blood from the road."

It took a minute, but she finally stopped growling and let us get close. She put her head on her paws and closed her eyes, breathing heavily in a fevered way.

"What happened?" I couldn't figure out why she wouldn't phase and talk to me. Remy stayed glued to my side, staring in awe at the giant cougar.

"Look," she said with a gasp. She pointed to Lana's left leg where a bear trap was digging into the skin. I was confused. The trap should have broken when it snapped against her leg and if not, her

teeth could have ripped it in half. What was stopping her?

I inspected the trap, while Remy stayed at Lana's head, introducing herself. I could hear her talking nonstop to Lana who didn't seem to be listening.

The trap looked like it was made of iron. I tried to pull it open, but the moment it moved, Lana turned her head back and roared at me again. The trap wasn't designed the way that most were. For starters, it reeked of leech. Instead of sharp points at the tips of the interlocking teeth, the ends were curved. When the trap closed they had hooked themselves deep into her skin, making it extremely painful to remove the trap the traditional way. The trap itself was made of the hardest material I'd ever encountered. I couldn't just break or bend it with my hands and opening it would take help. Also, there was no release mechanism, which meant, I needed to get creative. Lana wasn't gonna like this. The spring was the only weak point, but taking it out wouldn't do much good if I couldn't get the hooks out.

"Remy, come here."

She stopped rambling and walked over to me.

"I like her," she said, with a big smile, "Did you notice how hot she is?"

It was true. The heat coming off of Lana's body was like an oven vent.

"Yeah, she's burning up," I told her, crouching down to her height, "I need you to go to the van and grab my tool bag. Can you do that?"

I had a collection tools from a ll the odd jobs I'd taken over the years.

She nodded, "Okay."

As she wandered off, I started to work the spring. All the jostling of the trap was hurting Lana. I could hear her growling and her body was trembling with each slight movement. As soon as I broke it in my fingers, the trap went slack, but remained stuck in her leg.

A minute later, Remy came back dragging my tools behind her.

"Thanks, kiddo," I said, taking the tools.

Remy sat beside me, staring at Lana's leg- staring at the blood.

"Why don't you go back and talk to her?" I asked gently.

Remy shook her head, "You need help. Someone needs to get those hooks out so she can be a human again. If she does it while they're in there, they'll go right through her leg."

"Can you do it?" I asked.

Remy waved her hand like it was nothing. She went back up Lana's head and said, "Promise not to eat me if this hurts?"

Lana's sides shook and and low rumble came from her throat. It sounded like a purr. Remy scratched Lana's ears, then came back to me. She dug through the tool bag and pulled out a pair of pliers.

"Ready," she said.

I dug though the bag. I didn't have cast iron cutters, so a pair of bolt cutters would have to do.

"As soon as I cut one, get the hook out, okay?"

Remy tightened her jaw and nodded.

For the first tooth of the trap, I put the bolt cutters on the smallest bit I could get it around, right next to her skin and squeezed the handles together. The first cut didn't go all the way through the metal, so I tried again. There was a sharp crack and the bolt cutters fell apart in my hand.

I cursed quietly to myself. The bolt cutters were my best shot.

Remy reached up and pulled at the bottom of my shirt. I crouched down to see what had her attention. The bolt cutters had gone through the metal. What they couldn't cut was the tiny white rods that gave the hooks their shapes. They were finger bones- vampires' finger bones.

"Oh shit," I blurted out

Lana growled irritably.

"We got this," I said, not looking up. Unfortunately, the time for being gentle with this situation was over.

"Stay here," I said to Remy, "_Don't_ touch it."

Remy sat back and stared at the trap, making absolutely no move nearer to it.

I ran back to the van, pulling my shirt over my head as I went. I undressed and repositioned the van so that the sliding door was facing the clearing where Lana was trapped. There were faint sirens in the air, meaning we had to get out of there quickly.

I phased, then leaped through the trees. Remy backed away from Lana, watching what I was doing and grinning excitedly at me. She loved to watch me when I was a gigantic wolf. Despite my protests, she insisted that I was "really cute." Heh...I love that kid.

I approached the trap and did what I should have done in the first place. I used my teeth to sever the hooks from the main part of the trap, leaving nothing but jagged prongs sticking out of her skin. As soon as both sides of the trap were off of her, Remy came forward with her pliers. She carefully finessed each piece of metal out of Lana's leg. The whole time we did this, Lana didn't make a sound. Her eyes were closed and her face still. I really hoped she had simply passed out.

I tore the bear trap into small pieces while Remy did her job. My teeth made it feel like I was biting into a tortilla chip that tasted like Tabasco and ass. I would have to chug a giant Coke and chew a whole pack of gum after this just to get the flavor out.

Remy was working silently. Lana's skin had healed around the metal, so when Remy attempted to pull the hooks out, a lot of blood came with them. Animals, attracted to the scent, were staring to gather around the clearing. In the distance, the sirens were getting louder.

When the trap was in a few dozen pieces, I ran back to the van to grab a bag and a pair of shorts. I got back to the clearing, human again, and found Remy pulling the last of the metal hooks from Lana's leg.

I gave Remy the bag, "Get all the pieces of the trap. Don't miss any."

She nodded and snatched it from my hand. I went to Lana's side and tried to wake her up. I needed her to phase. She wouldn't fit in the van the way she was.

I put a hand on her head and felt the sweat through her fur. She was sick- maybe dying, I couldn't tell.

"Lana," I called, shaking her shoulder, "wake up. Come on."

The sirens were still getting closer to us.

One of Lana's eyes open slightly and looked deliriously at me.

"I need you to focus for a minute," I told her, "We gotta get out of here, but you have to phase first."

She took a shallow breath and closed the eye again for a few long seconds. Remy came back with the bag full of metal scraps. She handed it to me, then put her palm on Lana's head right next to mine. Lana's eyes shot open in shock. I wasn't sure what Remy was showing her, but it kept her alert. Remy smiled widely.

"Its easy," she said cheerfully. By my daughter's grin, you would have that we'd stopped for a picnic or something.

Lana gazed at Remy like she was from another planet. It wasn't fear, so much, as awe. After a few seconds, she took a deep breath and returned to her human form.

She looked awful. Her face was beet red and covered in sweat. She was shaking violently from the fever and she looked like she was in a lot of pain. I pulled her into my arms and lifted her as Remy ran ahead to get the van started. As I carried her, Lana put her arms around my neck, leaning against my shoulder. She sighed deeply and croaked out, "thank you," before passing out again.

It took awhile to get to the main road, but after some bumpy terrain, we were back on paved ground. I tried not to think of the hole we'd just made in the trees. Any second now, forest rangers would reach the clearing we'd just been in, see a lot of blood, and follow our path back to the street. Just to be safe, I parked us behind a small convenience store and cleared as many branches out from the undercarriage as I could. I gave Remy a few bucks and sent her insde to get water and a few bags of ice, hoping to cool Lana down and get the fever off her.

When the van was presentalbe-enough- and Remy was in the back seat with Lana, I drove us out of the national park as quickly and inconspicously as I could. As it turned out, the exit to the park had us backtracking the way we'd come. Once on the freeway, I got the chance to ook at the damage my van had done to fence.

I let out a low whistle at the sight of the carnage.

"Wow," said Remy, "our van needs a nickname, Jacob. I'm gonna call it 'Tank'."

I nodded dumbly in agreement and sped up.

Twenty minutes into our drive, Remy joined me in the front seat to report that the bags of ice we'd bought to cool off Lana was now a luke warm puddle and her fever hadn't dropped a degree. We would need a tub and an ice machine- which unfortunately meant another hotel. The closest thing we were gonna find was an hour away in Roswell.

We pulled into a Hampton Inn and parked in the back. This particular hotel was a two winged design, instead of a single six floored building. After a quick check in, I ran back to the van and threw open the sliding door. A wave of heat rushed out and mixed with the crisp spring air. Lana was lying still on the back bench, completely oblivous to where we she was. Her skin was on fire as I picked her up. Remy took the key out of my pocket and went ahead to open the door to our room. We were lucky that the hotel office was so accomidating. All I did was tell them where we'd parked and they set us up with a room close to van, making it easy to sneak a naked woman into our room without any questions being asked.

Remy already had the bath running with cold water. The tub was small, but would have to do. As soon as she hit the water, Lana's eyes shot open. She let ouf a light "ahh" and her body began to shake violently from the chill. Her face was still bight red, so I took one of the glasses off the sink, scooped up some of the running water and poured it over her head. She grimaced at the cold, but was too weak to stop me from doing it again. Remy took the glass from my hand.

"Go find the ice machine," she said scooping up more cold water from the faucet.

I grabbed the ice bucket and headed down to the end of the hall. The moment I was outside the room I felt a strange panic rise up in my chest. I was frustrated and worried. What the hell was wrong with Lana? Why didn't the fever die out once we got the trap off? And why the hell did I care so much?

It had been two years since I'd cared about anything that wasn't completely about Remy. I'd made a lot decisions in the last few hours without even asking her and strangley, I didn't feel the need to. Actually, I was proud of her for diving in and staying calm throughout this situation. It helped to ease the worry knowing that she was on my side. If Lana would just take a good turn, I could relax.

I got back to the room and handed Remy the ice bucket. She dumped it into the water that surrounded Lana and in a few seconds it had melted. Lana was radiating heat.

"What the hell," I whispered.

Suddenly Remy burst into tears. I crouched down and put my arms around her.

"I missed some," she cried into my shoudler.

I looked into the tub, along Lana's left leg where a large green circle of infection was forming. There was no time to be freaked out or disguested. We needed something to lance it with and alcohol to clean the wound- or to knock Lana out, I wasn't sure which.

I took Remy's face in my hands and told her, "We'll fix this. Okay? Stay here. I'm gonna get more ice and go to the store. Keep her cool. We'll figure this out."

Remy took a long sniff and said in a small voice, "Okay."

I grabbed the ice bucket and rushed back to the door.

As soon as my hand touched the knob, I stumbled back, suddenly dizzy. I shut my eyes, hoping it would stop the world from spinning, but that just made it worse. I could feel the revolution of the planet in my head. My feet went out from under me as I lost my balance and I fell to the bed. I landed on the very edge and made a last grab for the blanket before I hit the floor, where I lay covered by a cheap floral bedspread.

For a few minutes I thought I was dreaming that dream where you wanna wake up but can't open your eyes no matter what you do. My limbs were like lead and I couldn't muster the strength to get up. Though I couldn't move on my own, I felt myself being lifted and laid back onto the bed. I wanted to reach up and pull my eyelids open, to roll, and kick, and scream, anything to get back on my feet.

"I think we need a bit more lucidity," said a woman's voice. She stood near me somwhere, and she spoke toward the bathroom where another must have been. There was a warm, tiny body laying in the crook of my arm, snoring lightly into my ear. Whatever was affecting us, wasn't here for Remy.

Some of the weight lifted from my body and I was able to open my eyes. The moment I did, all I wanted to do was go to sleep. I yawned loudly.

The woman who had spoken came to the bed and leaned over me. She very small, Hispanic, and looked to be in her mid twenties. Her black hair fell thickly behind her back and over her shoulders. She smiled at me with very full lips and sat beside me on the bed. Her blood red eyes looked sweetly into my own

"Hello Jacob," she said with music in her voice, "My name is Maria. I need your help."

It was unfortunate that I couldn't talk in that moment because I had a number of swear words I wanted to throw at her. She seemed to get that because she laughed suddenly and said, "I'm sure you have a very vulgar and violent response to that, but for now, I need you to listen."

I wasn't exactly in a position to argue.

I heard a moan come from the bed beside me. Lana lay on her stomach and another vampire was staring at the green spot that was spreading along her leg. The vampire looked up suddenly and said, "This one's complicated. Its gonna cost you, Maria."

Maria rolled her eyes and sighed impatiently. She glanced down at me again, then gave a shrug.

"I think we can afford it," she concluded.

The other vampire pulled a scalpel from his pocket and slashed it quickly across Lana's leg where the infection was the worst. Lana cried out. I automatically tried to get up, but the farthest I got was little jerk in the direction of the other bed. Maria put a hand to my face, turning my attention back to her.

"Your friend is dyng," she told me, "there was a very unique poison infused into that trap. Our enemies created an alloy made of iron and vampires. Some of our very own are inside of it, so you'll forgive us for taking it with us."

I wasn't sure what she was talking about and I really didn't care. I tried to look back at Lana, but Maria wouldn't let go of my face.

Lana was still crying on the bed next to me. I could see the shadow of the vampire who was working on her, apparently oblivious to the wimpers of the woman whose leg he was ripping up.

"Don't worry," whispered Maria, "we're doing a little work on your friend to keep her alive. Call it a good faith gesture. She's going to sleep heavily for a few hours, then she'll be as good as new."

Maria rested a frozen hand on my arm and looked back at the other three vampires who had come in with her, smiling at each of them. While she was distracted, I attempted to tightened my hold on Remy. It was a scary thing, being this helpless. Hanging onto a fifty pound little girl was becoming impossible. What would happen if they attacked? And Lana? She was being tortured and I couldn't even move.

"Here it is," said the bloodsucker who was tearing into Lana's leg. He was smiling like he'd just struck gold. He held something out to Maria, which she took into her palm.

"Is that it?" she asked, staring at the thing in her hand.

"I'm afraid so," he replied, "If it had been any bigger, she probably wouldn't be here."

Maria smiled, "And the fever?"

"Heh," he snorted, "That's the expensive part, I'm afraid, but I have just the thing for it."  
>He began pulling tonic out of his jacket pockets, holding each one up to the light and seperating them into piles on the bed.<p>

Maria used her thumb and index finger to hold up the object that was in her othe palm. She held up the piece that Remy had missed, showing me what had made Lana so sick. It was tiny, hardly bigger than a grain of rice.

"Hard to imagine," she said, "Something that small could cause that much damage."

She made a fist around the bone fragment and placed it in her front pocket.

"We're going to leave soon," she told me, "When you wake up, I'd like you to meet one of my associates at a diner off the 380 at the Bosque exit. Its called Mabel's. You can't miss it. Bring you're little one if you'd like."

She reached out a hand to brush Remy's head. I chanelled every ounce of engery I could muster and took hold of Maria's wrist before her hand could touch my daughter. My grasp wasn't as strong as I had hoped it would be, but she got the message. In an instant her smile disappeared and the air of sweetness she'd been trying to keep up died. She shook my hand away, then leaned in close to to me and hissed, "You can also consider it good faith that we haven't killed you while you're lying here useless. Come find us, or we'll find you and it won't be pretty."

She ran a lazy, spiteful hand, over Remy's hair and walked out of the hotel room, calling as she went, "Knock 'em out."

A second later, I was asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time I came to, it was almost night out. The high pitched sound of cartoon characters hit my ears and I couldn't help but groan, "Turn it down, Kiddo."

A second later, the blanket was pulled from my face and I found myself staring into a set of deep green smiling eyes.

"Good morning, sunshine," said Lana, pushing a cup of coffee towards me.

"Crap," I lamented. I'd really been hoping that whole things had been a bad dream, but Lana was the smiling proof, that there were vampires waiting for us down the road. She was wearing a knee length striped dress, which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

I sat up, amazed at how refreshed I felt. I felt no exhaustion or stress. My muscles were relaxed as though I'd just slept for days instead of a few hours, but I didn't feel groggy.

"How do you feel?" I asked, taking the coffee from her, while pulling Remy into the opposite arm. Remy gave a giggle and cuddled up against me, but never took her eyes from the dancing cats on the TV.

Lana gave a languid smile at us, then turned around to show me her calf, which was clear of infection.

"I feel fine," she said, "it's gone."

"Good," after a beat, I had to ask, "Have you ever seen vampires act like that before?"

Her smile vanished, "I've been doing this for a long time and I've never seen anything like that."

How long could that be?

"How old are you?" I asked cautiously. My sisters would have smacked me for even daring to broach that question to a woman. But then, Lana didn't seem the slightest bit offended.

"29," she said, "You?"

"19" I replied, "When I first started to change, I aged 10 years in about a month."

Lana sat beside me, "I stayed the same. Have you ever seen another like me? Another kind of hunter?"

I shook my head, glad that Remy was too absorbed in the TV to listen to our conversation.

Lana nodded slowly, "You should come to Houston with me."

That was already a given. After that trap, I was determined that she not leave us until I knew she was somwhere safe. My focus was Remy, all day every day, but somehting about this woman, the fact that she was like me made me feel a little less alone, like I'd found a lost member of my pack.

"Can we?" asked Remy, turning her face up my chin, "Lana told me all about Houston and her family. We should go there, Jacob."

"We're going," I replied with a grin. How could I say no?

Lana took the coffee out of my hand and sipped it slowly. When she returned it, Remy crawled out from under my arm and curled herself into Lana's lap. Lana, though initially surprised at the affectionate gesture, put her arms around the tiny girl with a smile.

"What are you gonna do about those vampires?" she asked, "Are you gonna meet them?"

"No" I spat, "Those leeches can go to hell if they think knocking me out is a good way to get me to cooperate."

Remy reached out and put a hand on mind, silently showing me that she wanted to go to the diner and meet the vampires. I was too outraged to be surprised

"No," I told her aloud, "Its dangerous. I saw them and they're not like the ones in Forks."

"They saved Lana," she said in a small voice.

"Yeah," I scoffed, "and they probably set that trap there in the first place."

I stood up, picking up my keys from the nightstand.

"Lets get the hell out of here."

Remy stood up as well, only she didn't head for the door. She scowled at me, her little arms trembling as she crossed them across her chest.

"I don't want to leave," she said defiantly.

I leaned in to her, pointing my index finger at her chest, "This is not open for negotiation. I am not taking you to be slaughtered by a bunch of crazy, backwater leeches. Now get in the van!"

"I want to meet the vampires!" she yelled.

Finally, I lifted her off the bed, ready to carry her kicking and screaming into the next state if I had to. What did I care if she was mad, as long as she was alive? No tantrum was worth her getting killed. Immediatley, she shot images into my head blasting her displeasure at being dragged away.

I set her on her feet, giving her a last chance to walk out to her own. She blazed at me for a few seconds, then set her jaw and sat down on the bed, turning her face away in what was undoubtedly a pout. How could one pissed off look of hers make me feel like such a complete and udder shmuck?

I'll never truly understand why, but I think it was that point that I realised I was becoming a good parent.

I knelt down to her eye level, let out a long puff of air as I did.

"Look Rem," I said, taking her reluctant hand, "You're all that I've got. I can't lose you, Kiddo. I love you too much. So, I'm gonna protect you and that means taking you away from the danger, not towards it. Now, maybe you're right, maybe we should meet them, but if you can't go, I can't go."

"I can go."

Remy and I both turned to see Lana still sitting on the bed beside us.

"I'll go," she said again, "You two stay here, I'll go see what they want. I gotta thank them for the dress anyway."

She gave me a wry smile. She either honestly wanted to thank them, or she was dreaming of ripping their arms off. Either way, I thought she should get the chance, just not right now.

"Appreciated, "I told her, "but they wanted _me_ there and whatever it was for, I doubt they would tell you anything."

Remy's head shot around, "Then leave me with Lana."

I let go of her hand, letting out a frustraed growl, "Why is this so important to you?"

Remy looked down at her hands, then stared off to the side, giving me a view of her beautiful profile. Her full bottom lip was sticking out in thought and the lights of the room shown in her chocolate eyes.

"You said we could stay in Dallas," she said, looking downright miserable as she admitted it, "and I don't wanna have to go somewhere else. I want to go to school and have friends and grow up like other kids."

Again, I got to feel like something that should be stuck under one of her light up pink sneakers. I'd spent two years keeping her alive and, while she seemed well adjusted, she lacked any sort of normalcy. By keeping her on the road, I was denying her the chance to be a kid.

An hour later, I was behind Mabel's Diner, throwing on the shirt, shorts, and flip flops, I'd been able to carry in my mouth as I ran there. Remy and Lana had gone in the opposite direction to find a clothing store. Apparently, the vampires who'd left the dress, hadn't thought about throwing in some shoes. We were set to meet back at the hotel 2 hours later.

The moment I walked around to the front door of the tiny restaurant, a sharp, sweet, sickening smell hit my nose. Where the hell had they all come from so fast? They were close and there a lot of them. The smell did more than nauseate me. It fired me up. I threw my hand over my nose. Jesus, it reeked. How could other people not smell that?

Any doubts about sending Remy off with Lana were gone in a second. Before the stench overpowered my gag reflex, I headed up the few steps, turned the knob, and went into Mabel's letting the door slam behind me.

It was a tiny place. There were pictures on the walls of the owners and regular customers dating all the way back to 1958. Twenty booths lined the rectangular building with a long counter that surrounded the kitchen. Only ten people were in the diner, including the blue-haired waitress, who was pouring a cup of coffee for the vampire who'd just sat down on the stool in front of her.

"Get one for my friend," I heard him say in a thick Texan accent. He thumbed back to me when I walked in and she nodded, "'Course, Doll."

I hesitated, looking for the trap. Three of the other patrons were staring at me hungrily. I could take them all. If it came to a fight, I wasn't worried. It was the pretense that concerned me. Why lure me into a diner and offer me coffee?

The old waitress- I guess that was Mabel- looked at me with suddenly interested eyes. She winked, "Here you go, Sugar."

I was still standing in the doorway when she pushed the cup toward me. The vampire spun his seat around and lifted his cup in cheers.

"Join me, friend."

He was lanky and blond and his accent annoyed me, as did the white cowboy hat on his head. He reminded me of one the Cullens- one of the two that had abandoned the family. But it wasn't him. This vampire's eyes glowed red and there was no sign of the tiny fortune teller.

I looked at each of the other three, acknowledging them, learning their faces. Finally, I turned to the grinning idiot at the counter and sat beside him.

He passed the aluminum cream pitched to me.

"You look like you drink it black, but just in case..."

I didn't touch it. My hands were in tight fists and I was doing best to keep from phasing right there.

He was really pissing me off, "What do you want?"

"What do I want?" he laughed into his cup. He spoke so softly that only myself and the other three leeches could hear him, "Well, what makes you think I didn't just bring you here to kill ya?"

I started to laugh too, "That's funny."

"What is?"

I picked up coffee and drank a long hot sip. It was horrible. It tasted burned. I set the cup down and swiveled my chair to face him.

I dropped my voice to same level as his, "What's funny, is the idea of you dumb, redneck parasites, thinking that you have a shot at killing me."

His blood eyes flickered angrily at the word "redneck," but he smiled.

"Hmmm...you could take us all, huh? You think you're indestructible? You might be." He nodded quietly and grinned, "But you wanna know who's not? That pretty Mexican lady and that little mutant you brought into town with you."

I growled and took a swing at him. He fell back with an, "Ow."

"HEY!" Mabel yelled at us, but I wasn't paying attention. I'd grabbed the leech by the shirt and pulled him close enough to growl in his face.

He chuckled, "Well damn. There's the wolf."

I ignored the comment.

"Leave them alone," I seethed at him. My body shook. The longer I looked at this monster, the harder it was to stay human. He pried my hands off of him and picked up his cup. His eyes stayed on the rage in my face. I hadn't stopped shaking.

"Now that I have yer attention," he said, "just hear me out."

Mabel was still watching us.

"Darlin," the leech said, "more coffee please, but switch my friend here to decaf. He's a bit high strung."

Satisfied that we weren't going to fight, she went to get the coffee pots.

"What the hell are you doing," I demanded through clenched teeth. The other vampires were watching us like we were a boring TV show. Not one of them had moved when I threw that punch.

The vampire in front of me put out his hand, "They call me Whispers."

Like I gave a shit about what anyone called him.

When I didn't shake his hand, he continued. "I got some friends hanging around your hotel room. Some others are following your car. If you kill me they'll move in. Those girls won't know what hit 'em."

He was bluffing.

"If I killed you right now, not even your friends over there," I jerked my head toward the three on the booth, "would have enough time to make that call. Besides, those girls are just as effective at killing your kind as I am."

"I don't need to make any calls," he said. He cocked his head in thought and asked, "Are you sure your cat friend can handle a group of us?"

I shrugged, "You know, I haven't seen her in action yet, but she's been killing you guys longer than I have. I think she can handle a bunch of yokel leeches. Besdies, she wants some revenge for that bear trap you guys left for her."

By now most of the humor had left his face. His eye narrowed as he sipped on his coffee cup, "For starters, you already know, we didn't set that trap, and second, I don't think it was for her. You don't think that either do you?"

I crossed my arms over eachother and leaned my forarms on the counter.

"No," I said crossly.

"So, who in the hell would want to set a trap for you, doggy? And how would they know you'd be here?"

"You got some insight on this one?"

He leaned back, "Yep. Well, not me, exactly. Maria's got some info but I'm here strike a deal with ya."

"A deal?" Another treaty? "You want some kind of deal with me? I should have killed you on sight."

"_I _don't want it," he said slowly, "I'm just s'posed to offer it. Do you know what's happening out there? I bet you haven't seen a vamp in weeks."

That wasn't true, but there _had_ been a decline. I just thought I was doing my job right.

"Everyone's coming to Texas," he told me, "There's a territory war going on and anyone whose not a complete nomad is getting involved."

"Why?"

"For the last two-hundred years there's been a network of vampire covens throughout the south. It was set up after the civil war, after more humans started to settle 'round here. Covens were fighting for control of populated areas and the network was created so that vampires could call on each other for reinforcements and keep tabs on their friends. We stopped fighting when them Volturi stepped in, but ever since they disappeared-"

"Wait- what?" The Volturi were gone?

"Yeah," he replied like I should have known this, "most of their leaders were taken out 'bout two years ago. The ones that are left are trying to bring back order, but nobody cares. We're allowed to do whatever we want, now, right? So the fights have started again."

I shrugged, "So vampires are killing each other. Sounds like a dream come true."

"Yeah...well, it shouldn't. If things go the same way as back then, the incident in Seattle is gonna look like nuthin'. There are new vampires everyday and we can't handle all of 'em."

"Who's we?"

He huffed, "Maria and her army. We're the side of this war that doesn't want to get found out. We won't be ruled by the Volturi anymore, but we don't want the newbies blowin' our cover neither. So we need you."

This guy had to be kidding. There was no way he could actually think I would help him. He was a vampire for Christ's sake. His friends knocked us out and left defenseless.

"What the hell makes you think I'd wanna do you leeches any favors?"

"I don't," he laughed ironically, "but the boss has some things to offer you."

I shook my head, "There's nothing you could offer. There's nothing I want more than to kill you."

"Nuthin?" he asked, "Not even if you could save thousands of people? Not to mention the fact that we could keep those girls o' your's under our protection. There's a lot of us. While you're out stopping the new ones from killing humans, we'd be protecting yer little one."

"We don't need your protection," I grumbled.

"You sure? You smell that dontcha? If we don't do somethin' soon, its gonna get worse. We're out there fighting this ourselves, but if we had you and yer cat, we could cover more ground."

I drank more coffee. It burned my throat and gave my voice a sudden rasp, "And give you free reign to hunt humans."

"We just want our land back. Surely _you_ can understand that. Aint you some kinda indian or something?"

_That's it. I'm beating the hell out of this asshole the moment we're out of here. _

"We're willing to make some sacrifices if that's what it takes," he went on, "cut down our hunting, or go to different areas to do it."

That was intriguing thought.

"Now you're going in the right direction," I said slowly. I wanted him to feel as stupid as possible, "you want to _start_ with that sort of offer next time, not flimsy things like protection we don't need. What else have you got?"

The vampire smiled widely at me, "I wouldn't be so quick to scoff at that first offer. Do you know what the Volturi do to kids like yer's? I hear they got a nice little collection of 'em now. They've been looking for one in particular. A little girl with red hair who hangs around with a wolf. Now after two years, the girl they want should look about ten years old. Your's is growing like a normal human and they're gonna wanna know why."

Something cold had dropped into the pit of my stomach, freezing every limb.

"Huh," the vampire huffed, "I thought that might get you to take me seriously. If we know you're here then they pro'ly do too. That's the other reason we're tailing those girls. I'm telling you this'll work out for both of us."

The feeling start to come back into my face.

"What if I say no?"

He shrugged, "You could try, but the boss won't like it. You'll have all the vampires against you and yer family instead of just the half."  
>Now I was burning with rage. I wanted to tell this leech to fuck off and just try to fight me and my family. I <em>hated<em> that he could be right.

"Oh," he added, "and I wouldn't try to run off if I we were you. Those Volturi jerks'll follow you wherever you go. There's not many of 'em left, but they're growin' and they're gonna want that girl. I think you'll agree that its better to stay with us and finish this while you can. We got a girl who can erase trails and kill scents. She can make your kid impossible to track."

After he said this, the other three vampires filed out of the restaurant. The one beside me stood and fished a few dollars out of his pocket.

"Think on it," he said, "call me when you're ready to talk. Just whisper something to me. That's how I communicate over distances. When I reply, it sounds like I'm right next to you."

What a weird power.

He tipped his hat at Mabel and nodded to me before turning to the follow his friends.

"Were you serious?" I asked before he was to the door, "Are there really more out there? Do the Volturi actually have half-vampire children?"

He nodded in a solemn way, "When they met your girl and couldn't get their hands on her, they went looking for others. Somethin really should be done 'bout that. The way I hear it, those kids ain't much more than lab rats."

With that, he pulled a large tan envelope out of his jacket, set it on the counter beside me, then walked out the door.


	7. Chapter 7

I was back in the hotel almost an hour before Remy and Lana returned. When the van came flying around the corner, I was standing at the window practically bristling. I'd spent most of the time there fighting the urge to go looking for them. I mean, how freaking long did it take to buy shoes? Remy had been begging me for a cell phone for the last six months. I was just thinking it was time to get her one when I recognized the van's headlights coming up the drive.

Lana saw my scowl from the driver's seat and gave me a cheery wave. She parked, then left the van and practically danced around to the driver's side door where she pulled shopping bags over her arms before lifting my daughter, who was fast asleep from her seat. I was at her side before she could blink, taking Remy from her arms.

"Thanks," said Lana, using her foot to shut the passenger door.

"What happened?" I asked, feeling Remy nuzzle herself against my neck.

Lana headed for the open hotel room door saying casually, "We found a mall, so we had some dinner and got to chatting. That's a cool kid, you got there, Jacob. "

She set the bags on one of the beds and began pulling items out. Most of the clothes were for Remy.

"You could have gotten back here sooner," I said, still standing in the doorway.

Lana tossed a bag my way from a place called Goliath's and Green's. It took me a second to realize it was a big and tall shop.

"She wanted to get you something. Said you had trouble finding clothes because you're so damn tall. We started there and found ourselves all over the mall looking for things you might like. Hope you don't mind."

"My idea," came a sleepy voice that spoke into my shoulder, "you need new clothes and shoes that aren't flip flops."

"You found me shoes?" I asked astounded. I'd had to switch to flip flops a year back after my last closed pair had worn out. They were the only things that fit my size 19's that you could find in a store and usually, my heels still hung off the back.

"Oh yeah," said Lana, "We got you one of everything but the dress shoes. Can't imagine you'd need much of those with the life you lead."

Remy had begun to snore softly, so I laid her in the bed and covered her with the blanket.

"Thanks, Kiddo,"I said, planting a kiss on her forehead.

Lana was right; I had a damn cool kid. I'd known for a while that my limited wardrobe was becoming a bit ratty, but again, when you're over 6'5" clothes get harder and harder to find. Long shorts come above the knee and XXL shirts are long enough around the waist but look like a tent on me. As I went through the bag, I realized just how far the clothes Remy found me would go.

God, I loved that kid. The thought made me feel like someone had taken a blowtorch to my chest- _fine it was my heart. Yes, I'm a cheesy guy. Shut up._

Lana was removing tags and folding the new clothes as I passed her to get to the bathroom.

"Thanks," I said.

"No problem," she replied with a smirk.

I needed a shower. The stench of leeches seemed to have stopped just outside our room and I could only assume it was Maria's track eraser who was doing that. Even so, I felt like the smell was on my clothes and in my pores and I needed it gone.

I turned the shower to almost full blast and stepped under the scalding hot spray. The heat was therapeutic on my muscles which had felt tight for days and while it didn't do much for the smell, I felt like it was taking my stress down the drain with it. I'd never been one for long showers mainly because being away from my kid made me nervous, but with Lana out there, I felt like I could take my time.

I attempted to use the complimentary bar of soap to get rid of the vampire stench but it didn't help. By the time I was done with it, it was a ball of mushy goop that ran between my fingers. Since I was thoroughly relaxed and apparently as clean I was going to get, I went to turn off the shower. I pulled aside the shower curtain only to find an unexpected young woman sitting on the closed toilet, and staring at me as I stepped out. I was so startled to see her, I tried to step back into the shower and pull closed the curtain at the same time, but my foot didn't clear the tub and I fell back, ripping the curtain as I went. When I recovered from the shock, I was leaning with my back against the wall, with the torn curtain still in my hand. The leg still in the tub had just barely caught me before I fell to the ground.

"Jesus, Lana!" I called out.

"Well that was a little unnecessary," said Lana dryly, "I've already seen you naked."

"What are you doing in here?" I asked, still in the strange half crouched position I'd fallen into.

"I was hoping we could talk like grownups," she said. A second later a towel fell through the tear in the shower curtain and landed on my face, "You go ahead and get dressed first. I'll just keep my eyes closed."

"You startled me," said defensively. I stood up to wrap the towel around my waist, "I didn't even hear you come in."

"Well, what sort of cat would I be if I wasn't stealthy?"

I stepped out of the shower to find a pair of flannel pants hanging on the towel rack. I pulled them on and threw a band around my hair.

"What's up?" I asked.

Lana was standing at the sink, rubbing a cream into her face. She was wearing a pair of pajama pants and a purple ribbed tank top that she must have picked up on her shopping trip with Remy. She set her jar of cream down and turned to me, hooking her fingers under the edge of the sink.

"Remy and I had a talk," she began slowly, almost nervously, "she told me a lot, maybe more than you're comfortable with, but she talked about where you came from and what you've both been through."

I'd expected them to have a conversation after I left them to themselves. I'd hoped Remy would leave some of the bigger issues to me, but maybe it was for the best. Remy had a way with people. Most took an immediate liking to her and it had helped us out of a few rough situations while we traveled.

"She's extremely well adjusted for being on the run most of her life," Lana continued "and she's very mature. Some kids her age are prone to narcissism, especially ones who are the complete focus of their parents, but not her. She's also extremely intelligent, which can also lead to over confidence in kids, but she's kind, helpful and so adult for her age."

"You have no idea," I replied dryly.

"Oh, I do," she replied, "when she shot that image into my head it scared the hell out of me. I had to ask her about it and she told me about her parents and what they could do and how she got the best of both of them. She's that smart and she's only been in the world a couple of years."

"It doesn't bother you that her father was a vampire?"

She sat back down on the toilet seat, "Not really. I mean, it's obvious that she wants to be human. She's doing her best to fit in with other people because as far as she's concerned, she's seen the monsters and she wants nothing to do with them."

I cocked my head thoughtfully, "You know, when she did that today, it was the first time I've seen her use her power in over a year. She used to use it all the time. She preferred it to talking but lately, every thought is out loud. I think she saw that we were in an emergency."

Lana brushed her hair back behind her ears and looking down at her fingers said, "Well, I'm grateful she did it. I think I'd still be in those woods if she hadn't."

The next words felt heavy in my mouth, "She trusts you…a lot"

"Almost recklessly," Lana added, knowing that such trust wasn't necessarily a good thing, "She hasn't had much female contact has she?"

"Not lately, no."

Lana nodded thoughtfully.

"Well," she said finally, "You're coming to Houston, right? I think she and my aunt are gonna get along. Remy likes hearing stories and my tia has a million of them. By the way, what are you gonna do about those vampires?"

I groaned, "I don't know. I hate to say it, but it's not a horrible idea. I've worked with vampires in the past and if we have the same goal, it'll make things easier."

"If only you didn't hate them so much."

"Are you kidding? That's a great way to help keep things in perspective. If they're screwing me at least I have more I get to kill. How did you know anyway?" I hadn't said a word about my meeting since I got back.

"After they knocked you out, Maria and I had a chat while I was healing up. She introduced me to a couple of her friends and gave me an 'offer I can't refuse.' God, vampires are so cheesy. That's why I like to kill them before they get talking."

I had to laugh, "What was the offer?"

Lana looked at me darkly, "She said that she knew where my every member of my family lived and that she had people trailing them at all times for their protection."

"Sounds like a threat to me."

She nodded, "Me too. You know she's got a Volturi working for her? A couple of em actually."

"Really?" I stretched the word to show my surprise, "Which ones?"

"A guy by the name of Marcus. I guess he was one of the big ones. The other one is a little thing named Maggie. Apparently she found out some secret and it was enough to get Marcus to leave. They're both working with Maria now."

"She say anything else?"

"Yeah, something about an envelope. I was starting to fall asleep by then."

I smacked myself in the forehead and stood up, "I forgot. You gotta see this."

I was out the door and back in the bathroom with the giant manila envelope in less than a second. I handed it to her and watched her expression brighten into an amused grin and she went through its contents.

"Is this a welcome package?" she asked.

"It must be," I replied, "Everything we could possible need for a new life is in there. It's like the witness protection program."

It was too. We all had new passports, ID's, credit cards, a house, 2 new cars, degrees from expensive universities, school transcripts for Remy and just about everything else we would ever need.

"We have the same address," she said, showing me her new ID. I was more concerned with her new name: Solana Noemi Wolfe. This morning, I thought I was giving her a ride, now we were legal family.

"Guess I'm you're sister now," she said with a grin.

"You're staying with us?" I asked.

She handed me pictures of the large, elegantly furnished house, "If you're moving in there, you bet your ass I am."

It was a nice house. Two stories, brick faced, giant tree in the yard, flowers under the window and a neighborhood with houses just as fancy.

I shook my head, "They're never gonna agree to my terms on this."

Lana stood up and shrugged, "You're never gonna know til you try. And if they say no, we get to kill em."

_Bright side to everything_ I thought, as she sauntered out of the bathroom.

We waited for the vampires outside the hotel room so we wouldn't wake Remy. Lana sat on the railing that lined a low hedge around the building, sipping a Slurpee and looking around for the vampires who were on their way.

I watched her break up an ice chuck on the bottom with her straw before taking another pull of the frozen sugary drink. She must have noticed me watching because suddenly she looked up and asked, "Something on your mind, young man?"

It didn't occur to me at the time that she was referring to the bit of cleavage revealed just beyond the straw I was looking at.

"I was just wondering, do you ever get brain freeze anymore?"

She blinked in a thoughtful way before saying, "You know, I never thought about it. No, I don't get brain freeze. I guess it's one those things you take for granted about being a regular old human. Remember the flu?"

"Oh yeah, being in bed for days, chicken soup."

"Migraines?"

"Pulled muscles?"

"Acne."

"Sunburns."

At the word we both put our heads back with and "aaaaaah," remembering the pain of a truly glorious sunburn on a Summer day.

Lana gave a laugh as she returned to her drink, "You know, you're a funny guy, Jacob. I can see why she's so enamored with you."

"You think so?"

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at, "Come on. That little girl is crazy about you. She's already decided she's gonna marry you when she grows up."

Again. Blowtorch. Heart. Awesome.

My reply fell short when I saw three figures come climbing over the wall that separated the hotel parking lot from the convenience store next door.

Lana didn't bother to stand as they approached. Whispers got there first with a male and a female behind him.

"Hey there, Kitty Cat," he said, tipping his hat to Lana.

She looked at me, "I hate this already."

"Spend an hour with him," I suggested. She shook her head and looked back into her drink.

Two others approached and I was surprised to notice I recognized one of them. She was a redheaded vampire who I knew would have an accent when she spoke. I turned back to Lana, "This is the Maggie you were talking about?"

"Yep."

"Since when are you a Volturi?" I asked, stepping up the vampire who last time I'd seen was on the Cullens side.

"Since I survived the fight," she replied, the thick Irish around every word, "They only kept a few of us."

"Who else survived?"

She took a step back from me and shook her head, "You wolves never change, do you? I was all but unconscious for about three days and the only person I recognized from the fight was Zafrina but she died three days later when they realized she wouldn't join them. Doesn't mean no one else lived, but I didn't spend a second longer with them than I could help."

"How'd you get out?"

"I had help."

Whispers got into between us "Don't get too mad at little Maggie, friend. She's given us a lot of information we never would have known. Like them kids I toldja bout. She got a useful power there."

I really didn't care about her power or her for that matter. I turned to Whispers, "I've done some thinking."

"And?"

"And, if we're gonna stick around, we need some things from you."

The male who'd shown up with Whispers gave a "hmrf," "I told you all the stuff wouldn't be enough."

"Careful there, Jer," said Whispers, "This is a bona fide wolf man here. He don't take kindly to enyone impugnin' on his honor. Why dontch tell us what you're looking for, friend."

"First off," I said, "stop calling me 'friend.' We're not friends. I don't like you. Second, we'll accept your 'stuff' and if you keep my daughter safe, I'll help you fight the Volturi. I can't leave people to get killed by a bunch of leeches and that includes you. Third, I won't work with human killers. I know for a fact that after a few months, your eye color starts to change after you switch to animals. Anyone I work with better be hunting in the woods, the desert, or the sky for all I care."

"How long will you give us?" Whispers asked with a scowl on this face.

"Anyone I meet on your side has three months and then I better see a difference or their mine to kill."

"Anything else?" Whispers asked, surprisingly without a protest. They must have known I'd ask for this. Didn't mean they liked it.

"You're agreeing to this already?" I asked him.

He nodded, "We got another player involved in this. See we got Maria and we got Marcus and they got people of their own. There's a couple others who want this too. Ones been telling his people for ages to stop killing people. He seems to think it'll make us stronger in teams, get us to work together better. Might be he's right, but no one wants to listen to that kind of fanatical crap. We're vampires for crying out loud. Hunting people is what we do."

He gave a laugh at this that I didn't return.

"Wow," said Lana in a bored voice, "Is he an idiot?"

"I think so," I replied.

"I'll let em know. Anything else?" Whispers asked again.

"Yeah. I want to meet with the leaders of each group. I want to make sure my demands are clear and that it extends to them. I won't tolerate them killing humans either."

"We'll make sure it's plenty clear."

"No," I said firmly, "I'm meeting them. We're gonna have a big old party and every top vampire in the area better be there or I turn against them too."

He didn't like it but he agreed, then turned to Lana, "How bout you Kitty Cat? You talked to your clan?"

"Not yet," she replied, still perched comfortable on the rail, "you know it's not up to me, but I'll see them tomorrow."

"Alrighty then. We'll be talkin to you tomorrow. Come on, kids."

Each of them nodded to us, then stalked away into the night.

"Think this a bad idea?" I asked, watching them go.

"Oh Honey," Lana said sympathetically, "You know this is a bad idea."

_sorry this took so long and this isn't a very exciting chapter. If you didn't see my profile, i've under a lot of stress lately and my computer decided to go kapoot on me last week. I wrote this chapter this morning, making up for a lot of lost data and finishing off this chapter in a different way than i'd been planning, but i think it worked out better._

_Thanks for reading. _

_Lots of Love_


	8. Chapter 8

_ Hey everyone. Long time no post. Sorry about that. Things should be progressing faster soon. Thanks for hanging in there. _

_Before you dive into chapter, I want to make something clear. This did not just become a crossover. I added the first page as a joke. Maybe you'll get it and hopefully you'll find it funny too. If you don't, just enjoy the ride._

We left the hotel first thing the following morning, but didn't get immediately onto the road. Remy wanted to see a little of Roswell and I figured since we were there we may as well take in the sights.

Turns out there weren't as many sights as we thought. We took in the UFO museum and a place called Alien Zone that ended up being a giant gift shop full of tacky crap with alien heads on everything. The town had a springs preserve and a bottomless lake, but we decided to hit the road. In fact, we only stayed in town long enough to have lunch at a themed restaurant called The Crashdown Café. It was there that we had the weirdest experiences of our stay.

We sat down and were immediately greeted by a sixteen year old in a blue waitressing outfit. Her apron was in the shape of a silver alien head and every time her head moved, the aliens on springs that extended from her headband wobbled back and forth. Remy asked where she got them.

"It's all part of the Crashdown ensemble," our teenage waitress said in a deeper voice than I'd expected. It was almost sarcastic as she continued, "Maria." As she said it, she jabbed the back of her pen towards herself like it was a pointer, "What can I get for you?"

We hadn't even looked at the menu.

"I need a burger bad," I told her, "Just give me your best one, rare. Get one for the kid, too. Extra rare on hers."

Maria looked at Remy when I ordered the second burger. Immediately, Maria was smiling.

"Make it three," said Lana, handing her menu to the waitress.

She finished taking our order, then went to the back of house where I could hear her gabbing to her friend about us.

"Table sixteen looks like they just walked out of an Abercrombie ad. You gotta check 'em out."

Remy, not even looking up from her the placemat she was coloring, sang, "It's the clothes."

"You might be right about that," said, looking at the button up and khakis I was wearing. Lana was in tight dark jeans and a ruffled sort of red sleeveless shirt under her fitted hoodie and Remy was in a new purple sundress with a fake fur lined jacket slung over the back of her seat. None of us really needed jackets, but it'd be a little strange to see a tiny thing like Remy running around in the 45 degree weather without something to cover her.

A few minutes later, Maria's friend delivered our drinks.

As we dug into our food, three people came into the restaurant and sat down at booth in the back. They looked like regular teenagers and no one but the three of us seemed to notice anything strange about them. It was somewhere between their smell and the feeling we got off of them. It was like when I first realized Lana was around. I just had as sense that they were not like the other people in the café and they weren't like any of us. They were different in a way that I couldn't put my finger on.

The three of them, two boys and a girl, were completely oblivious to us and the fact that we were staring at them. I could hear their conversation, but there was nothing strange about it. A football game, a dance, annoying parents, and what they were gonna eat. The other waitress seemed to become scarce after they sat down, hovering around their table like a shy vulture, waiting for one of them- the youngest of the three- to notice she was there. If she could have seen the way he looked at her when her back was turned, maybe she wouldn't have been so shy but there was something self-defeating about her behavior. She carried herself in an almost apologetic way. Every time she looked at the boy and found his eyes elsewhere, she sighed.

Honestly, she reminded me of Bella.

"What are they?" Remy asked in wonder still looking at the trio of weirdoes.

"Aliens," I replied half joking. For all I knew, I had it right.

I went back to the burger in front of me and did my best to ignore them all.

We hit the road at 11am and drove through the whole day finally arriving in Houston just after 10:20 at night. As we moved along the highways, Lana told us about her family's history. As far as she knew, her family had been turning into cougars since the early 1800's. The first one- at least that was known to her- had been a shaman of the Hopi tribe in Northern Arizona. The story was that this Shaman had gone to the desert to fast and meditate for 10 days and when he'd returned to the village, a cougar had followed behind him. Though the people of the tribe were scared of it, the cougar never hurt or hunted anyone. She just followed the Shaman wherever he went like she was his pet. The Shaman's wife was the only one who seemed to warm up to the cougar and even then, it was a conditional truce more than it was love. Not long after his return, a group of vampires entered the territory. At first, they seemed harmless. They walked into the camp, wearing the colors of a nearby tribe and demanded to see the chief. When he came out of his hut, the Shaman was beside him with the cougar. When the first vampire attacked, an amazing thing happened. The Shaman vanished. As he did, the cougar grew in size until she had almost tripled in height. She lunged at the vampires, killing three at once with a swipe of her claws and saving the life of the chief. After the vampires retreated, the cougar laid upon the ground in front of the chief's hut and in front of the whole tribe turned into the Shaman. From then on, the cougar and Shaman were one, never to be parted. Since then, Lana's family had been blessed with nearly a hundred hunters. She, her brother, and her cousin were the latest in a long line of vampire killers.

She finished her story and immediately began to explain where we were going and what we could expect when we got there. Needless to say that just meeting her had been enough to boost my curiosity about the possibility of others like us- other shifters or hunters as she called us-, but I would never have believed it.

Lana directed us through the city to the south eastern edge where the houses had trickled to one every few miles.

"Horse ranches," said Lana, "everyone out this way raises horses, goats, llamas, some ostriches, dogs."

"Dogs?" asked Remy.

"Purebreds," I told her, "guard dogs and shepherds."

"Oh," said Remy thoughtfully, "Can we get one?"

"No."

"What about a llama?"

"Nope."

Lana tuned back in her seat to face Remy, "Wait til you get moved in, then start bugging him for a pet."

"How about some nice cuddly goldfish?" I asked.

We came around a wide bend and could see in the distance a large house. All around it were small trees, no bigger than 5 feet tall.

"Is that a vineyard?" I asked.

"Yup," said Lana, "That's where we're going."

A mile up we found the entrance to a dirt road and turned. Closer up, we could see the wooded area behind the house and hear the brook that ran through the property long before we drove the stone bridge over it. We passed thousands of grapevines before arriving at the luxurious custom built house. The lights were on and by the time we parked, a short, happy looking woman in her early fifties had come out the front door and was directing us to a place to park with her arms. There were about a dozen other cars there ranging from a brand new BMW to a 96' civic that was falling apart. The plates were from nine different states and one from Mexicali. The woman approached the van and gave me a big hug when I got out of the front seat.

"Let me guess," she said looking me over, "You're a big boy which says you're from the north. Your plates say California, but I think you're from farther up than that."

She walked around me while I stood there, a little confused.

"Dressed nicely," she continued, "With long hair, but not in a pretentious way. Maybe Oregon?"

"Close," I said, impressed.

"You could be an elk or fox, but there's fire in those eyes. I'm gonna guess a bear from Seattle."

"Look again," said Lana coming from around the passenger side, bringing Remy with her.

"Solana!" said the woman in a joyful voice.

Lana embraced the woman then turned back to me saying, "This is my aunt Gloria. She owns this place. Come on, Tia. He's not broad enough for a bear."

After a few more seconds if scrutinizing me, the woman snapped her fingers, "Ah, a wolf huh? You're kind doesn't usually travel alone."

"I don't," I said, gesturing to Remy who stood quietly on Lana's other side.

Gloria leaned down to look Remy in the eye, "And who are you, young lady?"

Remy introduced herself in a shy voice, "I'm Renesmee Wolfe."

Gloria smiled, "That is a very pretty name. Tell me, Renesmee, do you like pie?"

Remy's face dropped to an expression of awe and she whispered, "I love pie."

"Well, I happen to have an entire apple pie inside the kitchen that has your name written all over it," she stood up, took Remy's hand and together they walked towards the house. Lana and I shared a grin and followed.

If I'd thought the outside of the house was impressive it was only because I hadn't been inside yet. The front room was filled with antique furniture in dark woods that matched the dark mahogany floors. A chandelier in the vaulted ceiling provided light to show off the white stone walls and arched doorways. The front and side walls were moistly made of windows and in the back of the room, a fireplace tall enough for Remy to stand up in, roared. We passed under a staircase and headed through the back door, which led to a huge courtyard that looked like it belonged in a Tuscan villa. In the middle of the cobblestoned yard was a table long enough for twenty people. It had a white table cloth, candles, and at every third row of seats was a bottle of wine and a bowl of fruit, salad, or rolls.

"You're just in time," said Gloria, "everyone is on their way in and dinner is almost ready."

"How many are here" asked Lana.

Gloria sat Remy in front of a bowl of fruit and told her to dig in, before turning back to her niece, "Sixteen, including Ricardo and Lupe. We were expecting a pair of moose from Canada, but they missed their flight. Daniel will be here later. Right now, he's handling some clan business."

"Daniel?" said Lana with a hint of malice in her voice, "Daniel who?"

Gloria's hands went to her hips, "You know who."

Lana groaned and slumped into as seat on the long bench beside Remy. She reached for a roll that was immediately slapped out of her hand.

"You wait for the others," snapped Gloria.

"I'm not waiting for the damn Caballos to get here and tell me I can't eat before they do," spat Lana, " I thought we were done with those assholes."

Gloria bristled, then began a loud tirade in Spanish that Lana matched for volume and intensity. I didn't catch much- only the expletives- but Remy was listening with rapt attention, trying not to choke on her on her fruit as she giggled at the bad words.

Before they could finish their argument, a door in the back of the courtyard opened, and a young blonde haired woman came through carrying a huge serving plate piled up with at least a dozen roasted chickens. The smell was intoxicating.

"Hi," she said brightly, setting the tray down in front of me. She flipped her hair- so blonde it was almost white- then held out her hand. I shook it.

"I'm Angela," she said with a grin, "So, what's your species?"

"Uhh…. Wolf."

"Oh, you should have been here last week," she said, leaning back against the edge of the table, "We had a whole pack from Tucson."

I looked at her blankly, "You did?"

"Oh yeah," she said with a wave of her hand, "You wolves are a dime a dozen."

We are?

"Well, what about you?" I asked.

"I'm an owl."

I was floored, "A bird?"

She nodded in a cocky way, "Hell yeah. Birds are actually pretty common. You have no idea how useful a sky view can be. We're like the police helicopters of vampire hunters. Once we find them, it's impossible for them to lose us."

I had to laugh at the image, "So where does the owl clan hail from?"

"A bit of everywhere, but my clan is from Alaska," she said with a wink, "Snowy owls."

She nodded to Lana, who was no longer arguing. She sat looking like a sullen teenager while Gloria continued to berate her.

"She one of yours?" Angela asked.

I shook my head, "Just gave the lady a lift. That's my daughter."

Remy stood on the bench and waved.

Angela practically swooned at the sight of Remy. She took a roll and sat at the table, "How's the fruit?"

"Deeeeeee-licious."

"You know," said Angela after a large bite of her roll, " everything on the table came from right here on the estate. I picked some of that fruit myself."

"This all came from the vineyard?" I asked.

"The wine is from the vineyard. Gloria owns everything in a 20 mile radius. The vineyard is here, orchard is behind us, chicken farm is a few miles up. It's all local stuff and she owns it all."

"It'd be more if the Arces would sell. They have a dairy farm," Gloria said wistfully. The argument had ended and judging by Lana's face, she'd lost, "But at least they're staying put."

"For now," said Angela, "Gloria's been buying up all the farmland in the area. She lets the previous owners stay where they are and keep doing what they do, but most of them take the money and retire."

"Then why keep buying?" I asked, "Doesn't it just get harder to maintain everything?"

"Someone needs to make sure that it stays farmland, or else developers will come in and commercialize it. I grew up here and don't plan to give up my home to anyone."

"Can't blame you for that," I said. I knew full well what it was like to have to give up your home.

As we stood in the courtyard, a heavy breeze began to blow, bringing with it a number of strange smells; ocean water, flowers, trees that weren't native to the state and a lot of wet fur. The door in the back of the courtyard opened again and two men who could have been brothers came through. As they approached the table, more people began to pour down the steps that were built into the walls. The two men were James and Mickey; coyotes from Southern California. They were here as representatives while the rest of their pack was still in Alpine. They sat in the seats in front of us, while more people poured into the courtyard. Within 10 minutes, almost every seat was full and food of all kinds was being dished from huge serving plates. Remy smiled at everyone from behind half a chicken and a mountain of mashed potatoes. Surprisingly, not everyone smiled back. Lana sat on Remy's other side talking with a couple of women who turned out to be cranes from Corpus Christi. When I introduced my daughter, she held out her hand politely to everyone she met, but only a few actually took it. The two women talking to Lana were some of the few, but now, I kept catching them glancing at her, almost nervously.

I learned a few things during dinner. The farm area we were sitting in had been a training ground for hunters for the last eighty years. In fact, the idea to put a farm here hadn't come until the 60's when other people began buying up land in the area. Suddenly the government wanted to know the "purpose of land usage" because at the time, aside from a small house, there didn't seem to be any reason to have 100 acres of land just sitting there. Lana's great uncle sent a letter to a cousin who owned a winery in California and a few weeks later, a starter crop of grape trees arrived. Since then, the land was divided into two parts: business and training. As the need for money increased and family hunters decreased, the vineyard began to take over. When Gloria inherited the estate about ten years ago, there was a sudden rise in vampire activity and she took it upon herself to buy the lot behind her and expand the training grounds. Gloria's late husband had been the owner of a construction company in Chicago and upon his death she'd sold the company and moved back to Texas with her three children and two grandchildren. One of them, her nineteen year old daughter Chastity, became a hunter two days after they arrived.

Originally, it was just Chastity using the space, with the occasional cousin dropping by for sparring practice. A few years after they moved to the area, Gloria was approached by a man claiming to be from a horse clan. He said he wanted to work together to erase the vampire threat and that he knew of other hunters in nearby counties who'd be on board to form an alliance. As it turned out, the network was spread across the continent and possibly around the world. Naturally, my first question was, "Why did we get left out of this whole thing?"

Mickey laughed into the bite he was taking, "Last we checked there weren't wolves up in Washington. Your clan must have made a pretty recent comeback."

I guess recent was a relative term when you had the potential to live forever. For me, three years felt like a really long time.

Another thing I came to realize was that despite how long these people had been hunting and killing vampires, they knew virtually nothing about them. I guess you don't need to know much when your instinct is so strong, but it was amazing to me how many old myths had hung on. One guy swore up and down that sunlight was still a viable means of killing and another kept a cross around his neck because he thought the sight of it would burn a vampire's eye out its head.

I figured it'd be a little rude to just come out and call them idiots to their faces, so I held my tongue for the right opportunity. Luckily, I didn't have to wait long.

When the meal had finished and most of the wine was gone, Lana stood up on her bench and called attention to order.

"Hello, everyone," she called, "I'm Solana Gutierrez, Gloria's niece. I have to make an announcement. Something happened on the way here. We've been approached by vampires to form a temporary union to fight the Volturi. A war is on the way, a big one from the looks of it and they want our help. I don't expect everyone to jump at this, but I think this could be a real opportunity to learn about our enemy and I think we should consider it."

Her statement was met with confusion or disbelief by some and flat out rage by others. One man on the far end stood and stormed off. Gloria chased him down and brought him back. Despite the fact that he was twice her size and a hell of a lot stronger, he allowed her to steer him back to his seat. She stood behind him with a firm hand on his shoulder giving the illusion that she was holding him in place.

Lana told the group the story from the moment she and I'd crossed paths to when we drove up the path to the house we were in now. When she finished, one of the women she'd been talking to stood up.

"Lana, babe, while I'm glad you're alive and all, this might not be the best idea. Vampires are manipulative. This could all be part of some trick to-"

"To what?" Mickey asked from his seat, "To track us down? Every vampire in the state knows where we are and if they wanted to fight us, nothing would help them more than to be rid of one of us, especially Lana. The girl's a damn machine."

"Actually," Lana continued with a slight blush in her cheek, "we know what they're after. If all they want is their territory back, I think between all of our clans, we can get it for them."

"Why the hell would we wanna do that?"

It came from the guy on the end who'd tried to walk away, "What? We get them their land back and let them keep killing on it?"

It was at that point that I stood up, "No. We get it for them, kill the Volturi, and then we take out the rest of the vampires before they can sure up their numbers. The group that's asking this of us is small, small enough that they have to come to _us_ for help. They don't have the strength to fight the Volturi alone and they won't have it to fight us when this is over."

Lana cocked an eyebrow in surprise, "I wouldn't have expected that kind of betrayal from you."  
>"You don't know me that well," I told her flatly. I turned my eyes back to the group, "The ultimatum is out there. Anyone who works with us is to stick to an animal diet."<p>

Mickey let out a laugh, "Vamps 'going green?'"

I smirked, "Up north, we call 'em 'vegetarians.' You've seen it before?"

Mickey leaned forward, "Once or twice. You really convinced them to do that?"

I nodded, "Hell yeah, man. I think it's gonna help us, actually. When they stop killing humans, they start cooperating with each other. They live in bigger groups, protect one another. They even start remembering what it was like to be human."

"You're saying eating animals, civilizes them?" asked the crane woman skeptically.

"In a way it does." By now, everyone was looking at me like I had two heads, "Look, I'm not saying it's gonna make them model citizens, or even that they won't revert back after this is over, but for the time being, we're gonna have allies. Did any of you know that their eyes change?"

"They go black sometimes," said the guy with the cross. I think his name was Fred.

"Yeah," I said with a nod, "They also turn gold when they go vegetarian."

The entire table erupted into murmurs of disbelief.

"Never heard of that," said Fred doubtfully.

I wanted to laugh at him and remind him that he was wearing a damn cross for protection against a vampire, but the angry guy on the end had had enough. He slammed his hands onto the table and flew to his feet.

"That's not what we're talking about," he yelled, setting an immediate silence over the table, "We're talking about letting vampires into our lives. Soulless, malicious, bloodthirsty creatures that'll do anything for the kill. They've been our enemies since the beginning of time. They're the reasons, we're like this, the reason none of us can settle down and have normal lives and you want to make nice with them. 'Thanks for fucking us over, now let's be best friends. It's ok, we'll just forget about all the lives you've stolen, all the people you've destroyed so you can keep on living.'"

"No one's forgetting anything," I said firmly. "I'm just saying it can be done. We had a group up in the north. A small family of vampires who'd decided they were above the slaughter and my pack had an agreement with them that they upheld for a century. Hell, one of them had been around for 400 years and he'd never killed a single human."

"And you believed that? Could he prove it?"

I shook my head, "He didn't have to. The rest of them did that for him."

I held my hand out to Remy. She looked nervous as she took it and lifted herself to her feet on the bench beside me.

"This is my proof," I told them, "Remy's mother was a human and her father was a vampire. She came about because a few vampires decided to stop killing, to stop stealing lives and destroying people. If they can make something like her, it's enough to make me believe that some can change. You know I'm telling the truth, I can see how you're all looking at her. You know there's something different, something just off that you can't explain."

"So where's her mother now?"

The question came from Angela, who asked it like she was afraid of the answer.

"The Volturi killed her," I told her, "Along with the entire coven and my pack. I want to get myself a piece of those bastards and I'll use just about any means to do it. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'"

A silence had descended on the table and the rumble of thunder above our heads was the only sound as the other hunters looked around at each other, deciding for themselves if this was a worthy enough cause.

"Call home," Lana said, breaking the quiet, "talk to your leaders, or if that's you, talk to your clans. Let them know what we've said. Jacob had to lose everything to come here and tell us this. Hopefully if we can figure this out, none of the rest of us will have to. But the Torres cougars will stand with him."

I looked at her when she'd said that. It had never occurred to me that she might be a clan leader, herself.

Mickey raised a glass, "The coyotes of Alpine got yer back."

Angela looked anxious, like she really wanted to join in, but held back. I got the feeling whoever her clan leader was, wouldn't allow her to agree to anything.

"I'll let you know," she said breathlessly.

The crane women didn't answer. The guy on the end knocked back the rest of this drink and left the table. Gloria shook her head after him, but let him go this time. Fred looked doubtful, but at least he'd kept his seat. No one else was jumping at the chance to team up with vampires, but they all at least agreed to send a message back home.

Lana look past me with a sneer, "And what about you, Daniel?"

I turned to the doorway we'd come through. Standing on the threshold was a dark skinned Hispanic man. He wasn't a big guy, maybe just over six feet, but he carried himself with authority and pride, as he walked slowly towards us. He stopped ten feet from the table, his dark scanning the group, before coming to rest on Lana. He said something to her in Spanish. I didn't understand it, but it must have been rude because Gloria was beside him in a flash and there was fire dancing in her eyes.

"If you only came here for that, then you should leave," she said in a low voice.

He turned to her, lowering his head slightly in apology, "_Perdon, senora_," before looking back to me.

"We should speak in private," he told me.

Remy's hand tightened on mine and a wave of thought entered my mind. She didn't like this guy.

"I think I've said all I can say," I told him.

Lana stepped forward and stood beside me, "You don't want to listen to him anyway. He can't be trusted much more than the vampires can."

His darkened at the insult and she stormed past him, heading for the door into the house.

"Where are you going, Lana?" he asked before she reached it.

She spun back with her hand on the knob, "I assume you left her out back with the rest of the animals."

Without waiting for a reply, she opened the door and vanished into the house.

Before Daniel could get a word out, rain began to pour on us. At the table, there was a mad grab for plates and glasses and a people were disappearing through the doorway Lana had left by. I lifted Remy and followed.

Just inside, I caught Gloria, "Is there somewhere I can grab a towel to dry her off."

Remy shook out her curly head to demonstrate how much water she'd soaked up and grinned through the hair that stuck to her face.

Gloria grinned back, "Head up these stairs and go to the left. There are two extra rooms since the Canadians didn't make it. You can take those. I'll make Lana sleep on the couch."

I was about to offer to find a hotel, but she saw it coming. With a hand on my back, guiding me toward the stairs, she insisted, "It's almost midnight. Go get some sleep."

"Me and Remy can double up," I said, consenting, "Give Lana the other room."

I took Remy upstairs and entered one of the rooms. It looked like a room at a fancy hotel. It had its own bathroom, a fireplace, and a 46" flat screen TV. The bed had a remote on it to adjust mattress firmness and the comforter was down feather. I found a fluffy towel in the bathroom and did my best to get her dry, then got her into the bed and wrapped the big blanket around her.

Her eyes were closing the moment she laid down and I was confident that she'd be asleep before I got back with the luggage from the car so I pulled off her shoes and tucked her in. Before I could turn off the lights, she spoke.

"They're afraid of me, aren't they?"

The sadness in her voice pulled at my core. I sat back down and smoothed the hair back from her head, "They just don't understand you, Kiddo. But they will. Trust me, no one can resist you for too long."

She tried to smile but a thought caught her first and she suddenly looked spooked. She took my hand and showed me the face of the guy at the far end of the table, who'd spent the dinner conversation in a rage. She'd watched him walk away from the table all the way until he reached the woods. Before he'd shifted (wolverine), he'd turn and looked straight into Remy's eyes and the blame in them had left her with a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was afraid of him.

It was a split second before I wanted to track down the bastard and kill him for scaring her. I kissed her forehead, squeezing the pillow next to her to channel out my frustration in hopes that she wouldn't see it on my face.

"Don't you worry about him. Tomorrow, we're going into the city and away from here and we won't have to see him ever again."

Her arms wrapped around my neck and her lips found my cheek. In the kiss, I got a feeling of completeness and warmth. It took me a second to realize that it was coming from her and a half second later to feel like my body was glowing- yeah i just said that.

I covered her up to her chin with the blanket and reached for the light again. A sudden thought stopped me, "Hey, when did you start using your powers again? It's been so long, I thought you lost it or something."

Her heavy eyelids closed and she yawned out, "Oh, I forgot."

"Forgot what?"

But she was already out.

_So if you didn't understand the joke and want to, watch the first episode of Roswell. You can find it on Youtube. You'll find more than a few similarities to the Twilight characters. _

_I already have half of the next chapter written, so don't worry. Also, I'm looking for a beta reader if I can find someone up for the job. I need someone very familiar with the source material who has experience with writing. If anyone wants it, shoot me a message. _

_Thank you so much for reading. Please review. I could use the ego boost. :) _

_Love you guys._


	9. Chapter 9

I headed down the stairs, surprised by the quiet I found there. The house wasn't big enough to fit everyone, so some of them must have camps on the grounds. I considered going to join them. I also considered going out to find the asshole who'd scared my daughter with just a look. The idea of punching his angry face filled me with a sense of satisfaction that I was dying to experience. I headed for the back door. Through the walls, I could hear that the rain had become a trickle. Not that it bothered me(I'm from Washington for God's sake), but the lack of rain meant firmer ground, better tracks, and an unobstructed view.

I got to the back door, already smelling the stretch of woods that ran behind the house. Everyone had been talking about some kind of training ground and I wanted to see what they meant. My shirt was already halfway over my head when I reached for the door.

The house had no backyard. There was no fence or shed or lawn, just a long expanse of space and a pathway that led into the woods a half mile away. Standing in the middle of the pathway, was a horse. It was the height of a Clydesdale but lacked the bulk, especially in the legs. It was mostly coffee brown with a large spot of white on the haunch and around the tops of the back legs. It wasn't tied to anything and looked like it could be wild, but I knew it wasn't.

Standing at its head and whispering hurriedly to it in Spanish was Lana. She held the horse's muzzle and stroked her hand along the side of its face, staring at it so intently, that she didn't even notice I was watching her. I couldn't understand her words, but I didn't need a direct translation to know that this horse- who was definitely another hunter- was what had frustrated her so much. This was why she hated Daniel.

She let out a loud sob and I almost said something, but a hand pulled me back into the house before I could get a word out.

Angela stood behind me in the dark hallway, looking grim. Her blonde hair almost glowed in the dark.

"Gloria needs you upstairs," she said. Her eyes kept darting around me to the door.

"What's going on out there?"

She shook her head, "Not important."

I glanced behind me to the closed door. Through it, I could still hear Lana's muffled voice becoming more frantic with every word.

"You sure about that?"

"Look," said Angela, putting a hand on my back and leading me through the house, "every family has its own set of dramas. This is just one of them. Lana's never gotten along with the horses. Neither has anyone else, of course, but…"

She let the sentence trail off as we reached the stairs.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Oh, they're assholes," she said with a shrug.

"Well, I figured that."

Angela shook her head and started to head up the steps, "I'm not talking about the kind of jerk that you tolerate til they leave. Daniel is an asshole supreme. I don't even bother with the guy. His entire life is about pride and his own sense of honor. Everything he says is meant to be rude and everything _you_ say, he'll twist around to make it an insult. So don't take anything he says personally. He's like that with everyone."

We reached the top and she pointed out a room at the ends of the hall, "Down that way, last door on the right. Good luck."

"Thanks," I said dryly.

She gave me a pretty smile and headed back down.

As I went down the darkened hall, I could hear an argument going on in the room I was headed to. The door was cracked and their words came clearly through the opening.

"We could have fixed this years ago," Daniel was saying, "If you'd just given her to us like I asked you to, I could have taught her the discipline she needs."

"You don't know what she needs, Daniel," countered Gloria.

"That attitude will get her killed out there."

I heard something crash against the wall. Gloria had thrown something at him. I couldn't see him, but I knew that Daniel hadn't moved.

"It's not too late," he said calmly, "She'll listen to you, if you tell her to go."

"I'm not charge of her," she seethed, "I'm not her leader or her mother. She'll do what she wants. She's a cat. I wouldn't give my own daughter to you; I certainly won't give you my sister's."

"Your daughter isn't reckless and disrespectful. Solana is a problem and she knows it."

"Maybe," said Gloria, "But she's my problem. Not yours. You can't handle a woman like Solana. She was too much for you when she was a teenager. What do you think she'll do to you now that she's grown?"

"We have methods-"

"She's not a horse and she'd never submit to you. In the wild, you are her prey and she knows that better than anyone."

There was a momentary pause as Daniel considered her words.

"If she hurts me, she hurts Adriana," he reminded her.

"Which is why you're still alive," she growled, "I would have killed you myself years ago if I wasn't so afraid of what it would do to that girl."

Daniel sighed and I could almost hear him shaking his head, sadly. When he spoke again, his voice had softened and even warmed a little, "No, you wouldn't. That's not your way, Gloria."

"The past is long over, Daniel. I'm not who I was when we met. But you're exactly the same."

Before I could hear anymore (because I was pretty sure I didn't want to know any details of their past), I pushed the door open and stepped inside. They were about a foot apart and staring daggers at each other. They both turned in my direction and stepped back to opposite sides of the room.

Daniel held out his hand, but there was nothing welcoming in his face, "I'm Daniel Martinez, leader of the Caballos."

I gave his hand a hard shake then let go quickly. His grip was tighter than it needed to be. Angela was right. Everything about him screamed for a need to dominate, even something as simple as a greeting.

He took a seat in an armchair and told me, "Sit."

I didn't like his tone, but I took the chair across from him. Gloria went to stand at the window where she looked into the backyard.

The room itself looked like a study. There were bookshelves lining every wall except for a five foot gap above a fireplace where there was a TV. A fire had previously been lit and there were now embers fading out on burned logs.

"I heard some of what you said in the courtyard and I want to know more," he told me. In his hand, he held a highball glass of clear, dark liquor. He took a sip of it then turned back to Gloria.

"He needs a drink, Gloria."

"Then get him one," she spat, not even turning around.

His mouth thinned out and the grip on his glass tightened.

"I'm good," I assured her then turned back to him, "What can I do for you, Daniel?"

He still looked annoyed, but he pressed on, "I need to know more about these vampires. Frankly, I can't trust you if you can even think of joining forces with them and I need you to convince me."

"Why the hell should I have to convince you of anything?"

He leaned forward, "Because you're one of us and your child is not and I need to know that she is not a threat my people."

"She's harmless," I assured him, fighting the urge to punch him in the face.

"I see what she is to you," he said flatly, "and I'm afraid that it's clouding your judgment. You're forgetting what she really is."

My eyes narrowed and I had to keep from yelling my reply, "I _know_ what she really is. I've been with her since the day she was born. I know her better than anyone."

"Does she drink blood?"

"Not anymore."

"Are you sure?"

My jaw tightened at his words, "What would you do if she did?"

Daniel stood and went to the cabinet that the TV sat upon. He opened the door and took out a bottle of bourbon and another glass. He refilled his drink and brought me the other.

"I'm not going to hurt your child," he stated firmly, "I know what it would do to you if we did. But I think you've lost sight of your duty."

"My duty is to her."

"And that's what worries me."

I took a sip, feeling the burn go down my throat and spread through my chest.

"This situation is bigger than you and her," he told me, "If the Volturi are setting traps then they mean to catch one of us alive. Why do you think that is?"

My head went into my hands. I'd taken in a lot of information in the last couple of days and it was making my brain hurt. I didn't even want to think about why they Volturi would want me alive. I made it a point not to tell Daniel that I might be their target. He'd already pegged me for a weakling because of the imprint.

"Tell me, what makes you trust them so much," Daniel commanded, "You know they'd kill the you first chance they could. Why give them then opportunity?"

I felt a hand grip my shoulder and when I looked up, Gloria was standing over me with a comforting smile, silently telling me, _go on_. I sat back up and took another drink, then I started talking. I told him everything I could remember about the Cullens and Bella. I told him how they thought, how they moved and worked together; how they shared everything and cared about each other; how they took in Bella and made her one of their own; how I hated them and how in the end, they loved me in spite of it. When I started talking about Remy, I became suddenly invigorated. My exhaustion didn't seem so bad and I felt like I could talk about her for hours. But Daniel was no longer interested in her.

"Hold on," he said interrupting me, "Go back to the vampire's abilities. They all had powers?"

"Only about half of them. Why? Do you come across many vampires with powers?"

He snorted (the sound that came out sounded just like a horse's snort), "I don't let them live long enough to find out."

I snorted back at him, "Maybe you should."

He didn't like that. His nostrils flared and he spoke through his teeth, "I can't risk them escaping."

"That's not what I meant," I replied calmly, loving how pissed off he was, "I'm just saying you should take the time to know your enemy. The Volturi is made up of vampires with powers. They don't take anyone else. If you don't know what they're capable of, how can you expect to fight them?"

"We have numbers and great strength on our side," he assured me.

"Yeah? How many? Because sixteen wolves weren't enough to handle their army."

He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, "I currently have ninety-two horses in my team."

It took me a second to process the scope of that. Ninety two was just a number. Ninety two horses however was a hell of a lot of horses.

"Holy shit," I breathed out. I couldn't imagine how one person could be in charge of that many people. Not to mention all those voices talking at once. I jerked my head toward the window in the direction the other clans had gone, "Do all of these guys have so many?"

He laughed. It was an arrogant, cruel sound with no humor in it whatsoever, "If they could all maintain their numbers like I can, there would be no vampire problem."

"But then again, there'd be less of us."

He set down his drink, "You're right. We wouldn't even be here. I'd be close to dead by now, the rest of your clan would still be alive and well in Washington, and your weird kid wouldn't even be alive."

I felt a shudder run through my body at the thought.

"In fact, you'd probably be screwing her mom by now," he added, "Everyone would win. Unfortunately, that's not the case and, honestly, I prefer it this way. Unlike most of you who consider this life a curse, I like being alive and young enough to enjoy it."

"You've been doing this a long time?"

"Longer than most. Of all the people you met tonight, only a handful have been fighting for more than a couple of years. Most won't even get to five. In fact, I doubt a third of them will be alive in the next six months."

He didn't sound sad about it.

"Why's that?"

He laughed again and I cringed at the sound, "Because they don't know what they're doing. If you think _I_ don't know my enemy, you haven't spoken to them."

"Oh, I did. I heard some pretty stupid theories tonight."

"You haven't heard the half of it," he said with a sneer, "The more of them I meet, the stupider they seem to get."

"So, why not help them?" I asked, liking this guy less with every word he said, "Isn't it worth it to keep people from getting killed?"

Gloria, who had returned to the window, cocked her head in annoyance, "Don't even bother with that, Jacob. I've been trying it for years. Why should Daniel waste his time educating lesser beings?"

"Lesser beings?" I said with a laugh, "Dude, you're a freaking horse."  
>"Jacob," said Gloria cautiously, "I wouldn't."<p>

I laughed harder, "What the hell's he gonna, trot on me?"

In retrospect, I really should have taken her seriously. Before I could even look back at Daniel, I was on my stomach in a pile of wood that had once been my chair. I hadn't even seen him coming and already he was straddling me with one hand keeping my face shoved into the ground while the other was twisting my arm behind my back. I tried to shove him off but his weight alone was keeping me down.

"You know," I said against the floor, "you're pretty heavy for a little guy."

He didn't find it as funny as I hoped he would.

"Do you know what the average horse is capable of when cornered?" he asked, not bothering to let me up, "A kick from the hind leg can contain over a thousand psi of force which brings broken bones, fractured skulls, concussions, and death.

"I am not an average horse. My kick destroys trucks, knocks down trees and crushes little cachorros like you into pulp. That's doesn't even include my front hooves or my jaw which can rip the head off of a vampire in a matter of seconds. It also doesn't cover what I can do to you in my human form.

"I am stronger, smarter, and more disciplined than you and if you wish to be one of the survivors in the next six months, you'll listen to me."

"Why the hell do you care?" I asked, finding it harder to take a breath as he continued to push against me, "You're gonna let the rest of them die. Why not me?"

Daniel removed his grip on my arm.

"I really don't care," he said casually, "But I owe Gloria a favor."

I looked over to Gloria and she shrugged, "You saved my niece. Getting Daniel on your side was the least I could do."

"Who the hell says I want him on my side?" I asked, trying to rise up on my elbows. Daniel was still holding me down by the shoulder. God, he was freaking heavy.

"You do," she insisted, "Numbers are only a part of what he can offer you."

My hands clenched into fists. I was getting really tired of people forcing their services on me when I didn't even ask for them. Remy and I had done fine for years before I'd met any of these people. Why they did all I assume I was in some kind of dire need?

Finally Daniel got off of me and returned to his seat. My chair was busted so I was forced to stand when I got to my feet.

"I've got about all the help I need right now," I told her. All of my frustration had come through in my voice and she was offended. Daniel looked ready to throw me back on the floor. I stood my ground, ready for his attack now. But it didn't come.

"You have no idea how bad your situation really is," he said through gritted teeth, "How long have you been on the road? Two years? No family, no pack, nothing but a child that you're so obsessed with that you can't even see how pitiful your life is."

"You don't know my life," I said with a low growl.

"You've already told it to me," he ranted, "You left your pack. You abandoned them and let them die all to save a little girl who isn't even really human. You've forgotten your purpose, Jacob."

"My purpose-"

He stood up quickly and cut me off, "Your purpose is to kill vampires. Not run away from a fight."

"You think I have a choice in this?" I blurted out. How the hell could he think I willingly let any of my friends die?

Daniel gave a quick glance to Gloria, "There is always a choice."

He looked back at me and said smugly, "You left for your own needs and because of that, your pack and your friends are dead. Once you come to terms with that, I can help you."

I felt a familiar shudder through my whole body. I wanted to phase and show this fucker what a wolf was capable of when really pissed off. If Gloria hadn't been in the room with us, Daniel and I would be fighting to the death right about now and I would be more than happy to kill him.

"Do you want to be rid of it?" he asked slowly.

I completely misunderstood the question and threw a punch which hot home. Daniel held his jaw for a moment and when he released his hand, I could hear the audible click as it returned to its place in his mouth.

"That wasn't a threat," he said, pulling back his fist. He wasn't kidding about his strength. The punch hit my right eye and blinded me for a second. As I was recovering, he added, "I was asking if you'd like to be rid of the obsession, not the girl. I can't remove what you feel for her completely, but I can keep it from screwing up the rest of your life."

I wanted to tell him that my life wasn't screwed up, that things were fine and I was happy. But the truth was, I missed home. I hadn't had a solid thing in my life for two years and it was starting to grate on me. That's why finding Lana and coming here had felt so right. I wanted to stop running just as much as Remy did and this the chance to do it.

"My life might be a mess," I conceded, "But it's not because of her."

He gave me a smug smile and looked up at me, "Then whose fault is it? She caused you to leave your family and home to spend two years living in a piece of shit van. She clouds your mind and forces you into actions that you wouldn't rationally take. I can help you achieve some clarity in that."

"Bullshit," I spat.

"It's not," he assured me, "I've survived this long because I put my own needs second to the herd's. You're going to have to lead those people out there if you want them to live and you can't do that if all you want is to make her happy."

"Then why don't you do it!" I asked, wanting to pummel that conceited face of his, "Why don't you get the hell over yourself and save a few lives?"

"I have enough people to worry about."

"You have fucking horses!" I yelled, "They're followers. You wanna talk stupid? That's ninety two hunters who will follow you _anywhere_. Hell, you could lead them off a damn cliff and those idiots would go blindly without a second thought."

It earned me another punch. This one was hard enough that I was thrown back into the wall. I felt my arm connect with something soft then heard the crash of shattering glass. My head slammed into the brick and I was momentarily dazed.

I came out of it just in time to hear Daniel next to me sounding panicked. I looked around and found him kneeling at the ground beside me. His back was turned and he was attending to Gloria who was lying unconscious on the floor. I must have accidentally hit her when I flew into the wall.

"Gloria!" he was saying in a whispered tone, "Wake up."

He went on to say what must have been soothing things in Spanish, but Gloria was just lying there.

I darted to her other side. She was breathing, but not moving.

"What did you do?!" he shot at me. His eyes were bugging out of his head and he looked like he wanted to strangle me, but his hands wouldn't give up their hold on Gloria.

"_You_ punched _me!"_ I reminded him.

Suddenly, Gloria's eyes began to flutter. Daniel put a hand to her face as she focused her dark eyes on him, taking in what she was seeing.

"Daniel?" she said softly.

A nervous laugh came out of him when she said his name. He smiled widely at her, "I'm here."

Far from sharing his relief, her body shuddered. She sat up on her elbows and looked at him levelly, "I want you to leave."

His face fell like she'd slapped him. She was sitting up fully and had a hand to the bruise on her face that was slowly turning purple. Ignoring the hurt in his eyes, she said more insistently, "I want you out of my house, now."

His jaw set and his mouth became a thin white line. He stood over her, shaking with anger at the rejection, looking for a sign of hesitation on her part. I put a hand on her shoulder, but she ignored me, her eyes boring into his.

Finally, he relented. Without a word, Daniel turned to the door and stormed out.

For a few seconds, Gloria stayed where she was, taking deep breaths and holding a hand to her chest like her heart was about to leap out and run after him.

"You ok?" I asked, giving her shoulder a light squeeze. She looked first down at my hand, seeming slightly surprised that it was there, and then into my face. Finally her lips spread into a smile.

"You picked a hell of a night to show up here," she told me, resting a hand on mine.

I helped her to her feet just as loud screams came through the broken window followed by the sound of two horses running off into the night. I looked outside and saw Lana standing by herself, screaming Spanish cuss words into the night where Daniel and his companion had disappeared. She stood for a moment, looking to the place where they'd left then turned and walked into the house, wiping her face as she went.

"Yeah," Gloria confirmed, looking out the shattered window, "A hell of a night."

She stepped over the broken glass and went to the cabinet in the far corner. She reached in a pulled out an expensive looking bottle of whiskey. She handed it to me then turned back.

"Well," she said, searching the cabinet for something, "I feel like getting drunk. How about you?"

"Uh…."

She found what she was looking for- an old bottle of tequila (I think the term is extra anejo)- and closed the cabinet.

"Come on," she said, heading for the stairs. I followed dumbly behind her, not knowing whether I should say something about Daniel or ask if she should be drinking with a concussion. I finally settled for asking her a question.

"Is he nuts?"

She waved a hand like it was nothing, "No. He's just passionate and stubborn and kind of an ass. But crazy? Not at all."

"Was he serious about removing the imprint?"

The idea was so farfetched, it almost made me laugh to even ask it. Remy was a part of me. She was mine and even though the cause was out of my control, it didn't mean I could ever want to be without it. I'd never regretted anything when it came to Remy and there was no way this asshole could make me start.

"Oh, he was very serious," she assured me.

"He's done it?" I said still skeptical, "He actually just shut off his feelings and gave up the one thing that made his life worth something?"

Gloria stopped on the staircase and looked at me. Her bruise was looking worse, "He isn't exactly happy with the way his life has turned out, as you can see. That happens when someone has been through a traumatic experience and is forcing himself to live a lie. That's all Daniel does. I feel bad for his wife because she knows what he really wants and where he'd rather be. She sees every thought he has and knows that no matter what she does, she'll never make him happy and she can never be the one he gave up."

"And how do you know all this?"

She smiled sadly and began to head back down the stairs saying behind her, "Because the one he gave up was me."

We headed into the kitchen where we found Lana and Angela, already diving into a bottle of their own. They each had a shot glass in front of them and Angela was pouring a cheap smelling tequila into each one.

Lana took one look at Gloria and leaped to her feet, "Tia, what happened to your face?"

She put a hand to Gloria's cheek to examine the bruise. Gloria took her niece's fingers in her own, "I'm fine, _mija_. Daniel was just being himself and these two got into a fight."

Gloria put a hand a my back and led me to the table, "Now, you have a seat."

I planted myself in a dark wooden chair and took a look at the bottle that Angela was dispensing shots from.

"Sauza?" I said picking up the bottle. It brought back memories of campfires and teenage idiocy, "We used to call this 'headache-in-a-glass.'"

Lana snorted out a laugh as she sat down beside her friend, "What do you know about it, Youngin'?"

Gloria produced two more shot glasses and poured some of the whiskey into a glass then poured herself a shot from her own bottle. Without a word, she knocked hers back like a champ and poured herself another.

I shuddered as the whiskey went down my throat and a "yelch," came out of my mouth. All three women laughed. Far from being embarrassed, I set my glass back on the table and asked for another. It took a few shots before the alcohol hit me and by then a third of the bottle was gone. My mind was just a bit on the fuzzy side. Gloria had only taken three shots, but she was looking glassy eyed. Angela and Lana had downed more than half of their bottle.

Lana lifted her glass to her lips and paused like she was thinking about something hard.

"I hate that guy," she said before downing the shot.

Gloria looked at her drink, "I know you do, _mija._"

She looked across to me and saw the lost expression. She poured another shot and explained, "Daniel is married to Lana's best friend, Adriana."

"How the hell did that happen?"

"Don't really know," Lana told me, "It just did. One day, she passes him on the street and tells me he's cute, two weeks later, their dating and a month after that, they're married and I don't see her anymore; at all. She won't talk to me, answer my calls, or even change forms in public anymore."  
>"Why not?" I asked.<p>

"He won't let her," Gloria told me, as her niece took a drink, "The Caballos feel that if they walk around as humans, it makes them vulnerable. They'll do it around each other, but anywhere there's people around, they stay in their horse form. When they absolutely need to go into town, only the men go. The cut themselves off and vanish from the world."

"Didn't the rest of the city notice when a hundred people went missing?"

"Well, it didn't all happen at once," Gloria explained, "That herd's been growing for the last fifty years. And some of them, like Adriana, said they were moving away, going off to college, or taking a job in another city."

"Ana told me she going on a long honeymoon," added Lana, "For some reason they didn't think I'd notice that Daniel was still wandering around town."

"So, he gets to walk around free while his wife has to be a horse?" I asked. If it was possible, my respect for Daniel sank even lower.

"It's part of his machismo. He's just daring someone to question him," Lana told me before taking a sip, "So I did."  
>"You didn't have to punch him," Gloria told her.<p>

An evil little smile hit Lana's lips as she remembered the event, "You're right I didn't _have_ to. It just felt damn good when I did."

Gloria said nothing, but sighed into her tequila shot before drinking it down.

Angela took the bottle of Sauza from the table and filled her glass, "I never got what you saw in him Gloria. I hope he was nicer to you than to the rest of us."

She said that last word with a giggle as if laughing a joke that only she got. She gave me a dreamy smile then put her shot glass in front of me, "That one's all yours."

I toasted her and drank it down. Yelch, that stuff is awful.

"He wasn't so bad," Gloria told Angela, "actually, he was pretty friendly to me. Up until he found that stupid nest." She lifted her glass, "To Paolo."

The girls added their glasses to Gloria's and chorused, "To Paolo."

"What happened to Paolo?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

Gloria looked off, smiling sadly at the memory.

She filled my glass and told me everything.


	10. Chapter 10

I woke the next morning to what sounded like a monster truck being driven through the yard. I leapt out of bed and was instantly hit with the headache that comes from drinking most of a bottle of whiskey in the course of a couple of hours. Usually my system metabolizes alcohol too fast to feel anything, but fifteen shots and straight to bed will kick anyone's ass. I staggered to the window and, blinking in the sunlight, I saw a large truck with a trailer hitched to the back idling in front of the house. As I watched, a Hispanic man and woman left the back door of the house and hopped into the truck where Mickey was waiting in the front seat. When they were loaded up Mickey turned the truck toward the west and drove toward the orchards where other trucks were already headed. Just below my window, Remy and Lana were walking with a bucket of grain between them toward a chicken coup.

Remy looked happier than I'd seen her in ages. She and Lana were talking about something that I couldn't hear over roar of the trucks, but she was talking fast and excitedly. She threw her head back suddenly and laughed and I felt freaking chest about to explode at the sight. I'd never intended to stay here for more than the time it would take to drop off Lana, but seeing my kid look that happy about feeding chickens made me wish we could stay forever.

I threw on some clothes and made my slow way down the stairs. My head was still pounding when I reached the bottom and I felt ready to puke when the smells from the kitchen came down the hallway. Angela greeted me at the kitchen door, holding out a cup of black coffee for me.

"Morning," she said with irritating brightness. She led me to a chair and sat down beside me. Standing at the stove was Gloria. There was a large plate of bacon and toast on the counter next to her.

"Everyone's already eaten," she told me, as she scooped a spoonful of eggs onto the plate, "but you looked like you needed some extra sleep."

I gaped at her a second before I could find the words to respond. She set the plate in front of me with a smile then poured herself a cup of coffee and sat beside Angela.

I looked at the food then up at her, "Gloria, what do you turn into?"

She smiled into her cup and replied, "An angry Mexican grandmother. Why do you ask?"

"No normal human can drink like you did last night and be this alive the next day. How long did you sleep?"

"I didn't. That's the secret. Now eat up and go outside," she said with a pat on my arm, "you're helping with the apples in morning then training after lunch."

I took a small bite of toast to test my stomach. When I didn't feel like throwing up, I tried some eggs.

"Thanks for getting Remy up, by the way," I said in between mouthfuls.

"My pleasure," she said, then after a pause, added, "she likes Solana."

"Yeah, she doesn't get a lot of girl time."

"I can tell," she said taking a long sip of her coffee, "I think this place will be good for her."

I nodded, "I think so too. She comes from a big family. Lots of chaos, you know? It's been just me and her for so long. I wasn't sure she'd remembered how to be around so many people."

Angela smiled and swiped a piece of bacon from my plate, "I wouldn't worry about that. She's a freaking chatter box when you get her going."

Gloria gave her a hard stare, "Don't you have work to do?"

Angela's blue eyes turned to the older woman and she tried really hard to look innocent.

"Who, me?" she said with her mouth full.

"Go," Gloria commanded.

Angela popped the rest of the bacon in her mouth then went out the door.

When left alone, Gloria and I fell into an uncomfortable silence. She sipped her coffee, smiling sweetly every time I looked up from my plate.

I didn't know if I was supposed to say something about the night before. She'd bared a lot of her soul to me and even then, I didn't have the slightest clue what to say to her.

Maybe something along the lines of "You're awesome and Daniel is an asshole" would have been appropriate. Or, "It wasn't your fault." Because from what she told me, it wasn't.

Paolo's death had been a turning point in their relationship. More than that, it had been her way out.

The night that Paolo died, Daniel and Gloria were having a fight. This wasn't anything new. They'd been together for three years and it seemed like catastrophic fights were a weekly occurrence. Daniel couldn't seem to wrap his head around the fact that Gloria wasn't his subordinate and when he told her to do something, she wasn't obligated to listen. It frustrated him beyond belief. He'd tell her that he wasn't trying to be controlling, but that he simply knew what was best every time. In return, Gloria would tell him that she might not be a hunter, but she had cat blood in her veins and cats did whatever the hell they wanted. Usually, they would yell until they were hoarse and make up the next day but lately things had begun to escalate and this particular night, Gloria had threatened to leave him.

For the first time, Daniel had hit her. He hadn't meant to hurt her, but the thought of her walking away had brought a moment of blind rage and his hand seemed to have moved of its own accord. The force had knocked her to the ground but hadn't been enough to do any real damage to her face.

Their relationship however, was beyond repair.

Gloria stood, holding her cheek, told him, "Please go," then retreated to the other room and locked the door behind her. If he wanted to follow, the deadbolt wouldn't have kept him out; but he didn't pursue her.

When he returned the following morning, he'd told her that Paolo was dead. He and Paolo had been patrolling a park close to Galveston and found a house where a dozen vampires were living. While they waited for their back up to show, the vampires caught their scent and attacked. Paolo was ripped apart by six vampires before Daniel could do anything to help him. Seconds later, their backup showed and they took down the entire house.

Daniel explained all this, then told her that because he'd been so distracted by his fight with her, that Paolo's death was partly her fault. He then went on to tell her that from now on, she had to listen to him, to do whatever he told her, so that these horrible things wouldn't happen anymore and that he would protect her, support her, and keep her safe for the rest of her life.

She agreed to everything he said, then invited him in, and spent the day cleaning her house, cooking for him, and making love into the afternoon. When he was called away by the herd, she listened at the door as he rode away into the woods. The moment he was out of range, she called a cab, packed her clothes, went to the airport, and hopped a plane to Chicago, praying to god that she would never have to come back. Being from a family of hunters, she knew that chances were he would either come after her, or the shock of her leaving would be enough to kill him. She wasn't proud of it, but part of her hoped for the latter.

Two years after arriving in Chicago, she married a business owner and had three kids. She'd never intended to come back to Houston but when her father died of emphysema, she inherited the family estate, then the next year, her husband was struck by a car and died on impact. Gloria sold her husband's share of the business, took her settlement money, and went back to the house where she grew up.

Daniel waited a few days before coming to see her and when he did, there was no talk of their past and no demands on her. Her daughter Chastity was still dealing with her first change and he offered to take her back to his herd and help her develop her new skill set. Gloria refused, which only made Daniel want it more. He tried everything he could think of to convince her, and in the end, she had to throw a lamp at him to get her point across.

He ducked the lamp and raced toward her, grabbing her wrist before she could throw anything else. Gloria yelled in terror, throwing her free arm protectively across her face. When he saw her reaction, he let go of her, took a big step back and put his hand ups, showing her his flat palms as sign of peace. He wasn't there to fight with her and terrorizing her was getting him nowhere. He sat at her kitchen table and pulled out a chair for her, but she took a knife from one of her kitchen drawers and remained standing, keeping the edge pointed at him.

She asked him how he'd survived their separation. He told her that it had been painful. A part of his soul felt like it was being ripped out and for weeks, he could barely leave his bed, and almost lost his position as the lead male. One of the oldest of the herd, one who had stopped changing when she lost her own imprint came to him and gave him an herbal mixture that numbed his body and his brain. It kept him from wanting to find Gloria and it kept him from wishing for his own death. For days, he would simply exist, not dreaming or wanting or hoping, just being alive, continuing to take the next breath and swallowing any food or drink that was poured into his mouth. When they weaned him off of the mixture and he started to come back to reality, the elder began to teach him how to change his thought process to incorporate the loss of the woman he was meant to be with. He had to meditate on living a life without her, accept that she would not come back, and accept the fact that it was his fault that she was gone. The hardest part was realizing that it was a good thing that they weren't together. She was better off and he could concentrate on what was best for the herd.

When all of that came together, he was able to willingly breathe again, never as easy as before he'd met Gloria, but he would live and he could lead his people. The imprint was still there, but for the first time in his life he had some measure of control of it. He'd married Adriana just before Gloria had come back to Houston and he'd been a good and faithful husband to her but it was obvious that despite being alive, he was not happy. Gloria was relatively sure that, even with her, he had never really been happy in the first place. Because instinct wasn't happiness, nature wasn't happiness, and being forced into loving someone, sure as hell wasn't happiness.

When Gloria had finished her story, she'd gone on (very drunkenly) to complain about the Caballos and eventually, men in general. I tried to apologize on behalf of Y-chromosomes everywhere, but by then she was pretty riled up on tequila and didn't want to hear it. That was about when I realized that I'd had too much myself and stumbled up to bed.

I kept glancing at her as I ate my breakfast, still thinking I should say something. Before I could, she rose from her seat, kissed my cheek in a motherly way, and said, "I think it's time I got some sleep. I'll see you at dinner."

A few minutes later, I was standing outside in the sun, feeling the brisk air on my skin. Despite the rain from the night before, the sky was clear and blue. In the distance, all of the other hunters were gathered in a huge apple orchard. Not far away, Remy and Lana were coming from the barn, laughing about something, still carrying the bucket between them. I lifted up Remy when she got close enough and kissed her on the cheek.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

She suppressed a giggle in her hand and whispered in my ear, "The pigs were breeding."

Then her face turned bright red and she giggled again.

"Well," I said, matter-of-factly, "There's a conversation I wasn't ready to have with you yet."

Lana, who was putting the bucket away in the shed by the house said, "Already taken care of."

"Thanks?"

She smiled and shut the shed door, then joined us. She looked up at Remy, "Why don't you run out and help them with the apples. There's some other kids over there who'd love to meet you."

Remy squirmed til I put her down and she ran full speed off to the orchard. When she was gone, Lana threw her hands up in defense, "I swear, I had no idea. I never would have taken her back there if I knew there were pigs doing it."

"How'd she take it?" I asked carefully.

Lana shrugged, "She's a kid. She laughed herself stupid."

We headed toward the trees where Remy was already talking to half a dozen kids that looked close to her age.

"Who are they?" I asked

"The two boys there are Joseph and Abel. They belong to Ricardo and Lupe, who work here with tia when there are no hunters around. The skinny one there is James' son, Evan. Whenever the coyotes are here, they bring Evan."

"He's not a hunter?"

"Not yet, but James is hopeful. The girl with the pigtails is Myra and she belongs to Hannah." She pointed out Hannah who I was pretty sure was a rattlesnake from Elko, NV. Myra was only about four, the youngest in the group. Lana the pointed to the two oldest, "And the other two are Nathan and Brynn. They're my cousin's kids."

"Where's your cousin?"

Lana frowned, "Tia says she's in New York for the time being. She met some singer while he was here playing a concert and when he went back home, she went with him. She's been there for over a month."

"That's a long time to be away from her kids."

"Yeah, it's not like her. I have two other cousins. Twins. They live in Dallas where they can pretend the rest of us don't exist." She said it bitterly and didn't elaborate.

As we got closer, I could see James and Hannah watching as their children played with Remy. Mickey was able to pull James' focus back to his work, but Hannah look genuinely concerned. I almost yelled something at her, but Lana stopped me.

"Give her time, Jacob. This is an adjustment for all of them."

I stopped, "They act like she's dangerous."

She faced me, "In their defense, they don't know that she's not dangerous and now she's around their kids. What would you do?"

"Then why did you send her over there?"

Lana looked back over toward the trees and smiled, "That's why."

Remy and Brynn were sitting under Hannah's apple tree. Brynn was teaching Remy some sort of clapping game while Myra looked on, mesmerized by the rhythm of their hands slapping together. Hannah gave them an uncertain smile then went back to picking apples.

"They're all in the same boat," Lana told me, still looking at the kids, "They come into this life and get stuck in it. Most of them never see the inside of a public school because their parents are so worried about what will happen when they finally change. They need all the friends they can get."

"What about you?"

She shook her head, "My mom thought she could run from this. She was convinced that if we left Houston, Antonio and I could live normal lives. She never changed, neither did Gloria, and she thought maybe we wouldn't either if we could get away. She didn't know that it had nothing to do with Houston. Eventually vampires came to Socorro. I was sixteen."

Her voice was hard and as she looked at the children, I could see that they were something she had looked forward to in life. Now that she was hunting vampires, having kids was a dream that she'd given up on.

"How did your cousin end up with two kids?" I asked.

A humorless laugh came out of her, "She had Nathan right before she turned sixteen and Brynn, about two years later."

"Damn," I said with a slight shudder. I'd taken on a lot at a young age, but two kids before a eighteen was too much.

"Yeah, she thought she could fight it off too, but the second she got here," Lana snapped for emphasis.

"Is that why you got married so young?"

She looked back at me and nodded, "I thought that if I could pop out a kid it would stop. You gotta understand, I was terrified when this first started. I had no control and no help. Until Antonio changed, it was just me. "

She started walking again and continued, "But as hard as we tried, we couldn't get pregnant and after the first five years or so, I just resigned myself to the life. I was gonna kill vampires and that'd be it."

"Until?"

"Until about a couple years later when I realized that I wasn't aging at all. My hair and fingernails kept growing, but my face hadn't changed and I still looked like a teenager. There's only so much you can attribute to good genes, you know? I knew eventually, they'd figure it out, so I was just planning my escape when I got caught. After I met you on the street, he got really suspicious and followed me out that night while I was hunting."

"What did he think?"

"That I was a demon from hell."

"Gotta love that strict Catholic upbringing."

"Yeah," she said flatly, "I was about to go anyway. You coming along just gave me the push I needed."

We approached the tree that the kids were playing under and Lana called, "Off your butts, guys. Let's get some apples."

They went to the pile of buckets, each raised one over their head and they ran for the trees to help. Remy scaled a trunk and threw apples down to Evan and Nathan. Brynn was hallway up another tree with Abel while Joseph handed them buckets.

"Apples, huh?" I asked

Lana grabbed a bucket and handed me one, "This is how we pay Gloria back for taking us all in."

We were out there until almost three in the afternoon going from tree to tree. The expanse of the orchard was over an acre in size and we didn't even cover a quarter of it by the time we were done. Apparently this was a daily routine for anyone who stayed with Gloria. Sometimes it was harvesting grapes from the vineyard, or bottling jams to sell at the farmer's market, but this time of year, we were picking apples. By the time lunch was called it seemed like a small price to pay for her hospitality. It was a fun in the trees. Remy was bouncing from branch to branch and could clear a tree in a matter of minutes. I could hear raunchy conversations taking place by people hidden behind thick leaves while buckets piled up beneath all the way up until the bell rang, calling us in.

After scarfing down some leftover chicken and rolls, we headed down into the woods to the training grounds, while the kids stayed inside to roll out cookies with Lupe. Gloria was still asleep.

We walked together for the first mile, then parts of the group broke off. The coyotes went their own direction. The cranes followed with Angela and a few minutes later, I could see three oversized birds flying through the sky towards a spot in the distance.

Lana and Hannah chatted at my side and lead me to the clearing where we would be training. The weather was drier, but it felt good to be immersed in pine trees again. It had been awhile. I soaked up the smell of the pine and the sounds of the birds. The trees were far enough apart that there was no canopy so I could feel the sun on my face. We weren't following any sort of marked path but everyone knew exactly where they were going…you know, except me. We walked for another mile before we stopped at the stream that ran through the property. The coverage here was heavier than the edges of the forest and the sun only came through when there was a breeze.

The man from the night before- the wolverine- was waiting for us. It hadn't occurred to me that this was the first time I'd seen him all day. He hadn't been with us in the orchard or at lunch. The smell of blood lingered on him, making me think that he'd been hunting for his meals. He was staring up at the tree branches like he wanted to rip them down. When the rest had gathered, he nodded a greeting to me, but his face remained in a constant scowl. Angela and her crane friends were perched on a nearby tree limb, watching the action from above. Scattered all around the space were clothes; dresses, shorts, and shirts to be thrown on at any given moment. The bird chicks seemed to be eying some pieces from their branch.

The wolverine stepped up to me and stood about five feet away. He apologized stiffly for his behavior the night before, but didn't look too sympathetic. I was more glad than ever that Remy was back at the house with Gloria. A redheaded guy called the wolverine over to him.

"Give him a break, Chuck," said the ginger, "It's his first time here."

"First up," called a voice behind me, "James, get in there with Angela!"

James shuffled out of his clothes while Angela landed in the middle of the clearing. When he'd changed forms, he was a grey coyote the size of a timber wolf. He joined her in the clearing, someone yelled "go" and they began to fight. Angela's talon raked across James's skin and his jaws fought for a hold on her wings. When he grabbed her, he shook her for a minute then threw her off into the woods. He was on her before she could get back to the "ring." In a flash, her claws had slashed up into his face, taking the sight from his right eye. Seconds later, they were both back into the fight. Blood poured onto the ground from their cuts, but neither backed down for a second.

Lana stood beside me as I watched in disbelief.

"They'll be fine," she assured me when she saw the expression on my face, "Give it an hour and they'll both be back to their beautiful selves."

"It's not that," I said, still looking at the fight, "What the hell are they doing?"

"Something wrong with the way we spar?" asked Chuck.

"Yeah," I told him flatly, "You're doing it wrong."

Chuck started to turn purple in the face. Lana let out a burst of laughter at him, "Chuck, if you don't like it, you better get in there and show him how it's done."

Chuck got my face, "You and me are next."

I nodded once to him, "It's on, big guy."

Angela and James finished up their match and the floor was cleared.

"James," said Fred, "You're the winner. Do you want a new challenger?"

James was laying down next to Mickey who was checking on his brother's wounds. He turned back and shook his head.

"Then next-"

"Next is me!" called Chuck, "Me and wolf boy here are gonna have a go."

He leaned in close, "Don't hold back."

"Don't have to."

Chuck headed toward the woods to drop his clothes. I walked to the center of the ring and waited. The rest of the group was staring at me, confused until Chuck returned to the ring as a rather large wolverine. Then they realized that I wasn't going to phase. Then they were laughing.

"You sure about this?" called Lana.

I threw her a thumbs up, "Yep."

"Okay," she said doubtfully, "Annnnnnd go!"

Chuck charged. He only came up to my waist, but it was enough to knock me down. I hit the ground and when he came up my body to rip my face off, I got a leg under him and used the leverage to launch him across the ring. He landed on his back and instantly bounced to his feet, ready to attack again. He charged again and this time, I jumped over him. I rolled, took hold of his back legs and used the momentum of my roll to throw him into a trunk on the other side of the clearing. This time as he tried to reorient himself, I leaped up into the tree he'd crashed into and came down on him from above. He was ready this time and threw me off of him, then tried again for my face. I took him by the snout and shoved his head into the ground, putting him on his side like a dog. He struggled and snarled, but I was able to get on top of him and pin him down.

"Call it!" I yelled to Lana, then staring Chuck down, I said quietly, "I win, douchebag. I told you, you're doing it wrong. If you can't get out of this hold, a vampire will tear you apart."

Chuck didn't hear me. He continued to try to get out from under me, refusing to acknowledge that he'd been beaten.

"Hit him" Lana called, "The only way to win is to knock him out."

I pulled my fist back, but stopped at the last second. Instead, I leaned back down and repeated, "I win. And if you ever threaten my kid again, I'm gonna tear your fucking legs off. "

Then I hit him. Not too hard, just enough to get away from him without being attacked. I headed back toward the outer edges of the ring and was about to say something both witty and smart when I heard Chuck's footsteps coming up behind me. He was still on all fours and thought he was about to get the jump on me. I turned, ready to defend myself only to find I didn't have to. Mickey and James were wrestling the wolverine to the ground. James was back to his human form and had Chuck in a headlock.

"You're done," he yelled as he was swung around, "You're done, man."

Chuck was able to get James off of his neck, but Mickey had him from behind and pulled him back by the legs saying, "He beat you, Chucky. Back off."

Mickey had to get him almost to the woods before Chuck relented. He phased, threw on a pair of shorts, then sat at the edge of the ring, taking deep breaths and trying to calm himself down. I'd expected him to storm off again, but he just sat there and watched the rest of the matches.

"You going again, Jacob?" asked Lana.

I shook my head and joined the crowd. Most of the hunters looked confused, as if fighting in their human form had never occurred to them. None of them spoke to me after, but every time I turned my head I could catch one or another of them looking at me. After another three hours of matches, everyone gathered around. The two crane women and Angela entered the clearing in their human forms.

"What was that about?" Hannah asked as we walked back inside, "We never fight that way."

"Why not?" I asked.

She shrugged as she hadn't really thought about it before, "We're stronger as animals. It lets us use our natural abilities and that's what we're trying to strengthen."

I shrugged, "You guys are training to fight vampires, right? They don't have other forms. They fight like humans do. Why the hell would you practice on each other while you're phased?"

"This is how we've always done it," said Fred, stepping up from behind, "We don't have vampires to practice on. How are we supposed to know?"

Suddenly, everyone's eyes were on me and I kept hearing Daniel, telling me that I was gonna have to take charge out here. I didn't want it, but it didn't look like I had a choice.

"What do you suggest?" asked Chuck, asked walking far behind.

I turned back to him and found that all fourteen hunters had fallen back and every eye was on me. I stopped and they did too.

"I suggest that you stop with tradition and deal with reality," I turned to the taller of the crane women, "What's your name?"

Back in the clearing, she'd thrown on a tank top along with a pair of sweats that cut off high on her legs. She looked at me, appalled that I didn't already know who she was, sticking out her chest as she did. Even though she looked pissed, I think she was trying to flirt or something. She didn't have any feathers to flair out, so I think she was trying to make due. Thank god she was wearing clothes.

"Rosie," she sneered.

"How big is your flock, Rosie?"

Something flashed in her eyes and her demeanor changed almost instantly.

"Seventeen," she said staring hard at me.

I stared right back, "How often do you lose a bird?"

She quickly lost her attitude when I asked this. Her face crumbled and it looked like she was going to cry. The other crane, after telling me her name was Meryl, grabbed Rosie's shoulder to steady her then turned to me.

"There are seventeen of us right now. We just lost six in a raid last weekend."

"Six?" I asked loudly. In fact, I almost yelled it, "You lost six people in one night?"

Rosie dissolved at this point and now Meryl was glaring at me, "This is the reality. In a few months, our numbers will be back up."

"And then what?" I pushed, gaining dirty looks from the rest of them. So, I turned to all of them, "You put up with this? You lose your families and your solution is to throw more people into this mess? Mickey, what about you?"

Mickey grinned at me, "Cranes are notorious for frequent changes in leadership. I've been in charge of my pack for eight years and we've only lost two since then."

I nodded to the redheaded guy, "And you?"

"Kevin," he said with a wave of his hand, "American bison. Our herd's got about twenty two. We lose one every few weeks."

"Doesn't that freak you out?" I asked, in complete disbelief, "I mean if you lose one of your people every few weeks, doesn't that kill you?"

"We get a new one-"

I cut him off, "Fuck that! These are people- your people, not buffalo."

"Bison," he corrected me.

"Whatever!" I barked finally matching my voice's volume to my rising frustration, "They're human beings and they die because you guys don't know what the fuck you're doing."

"What the hell do you know?" asked Chuck from his spot, "Your pack's dead too right?"

I felt my hands curl into fists. I was really getting sick of people reminding me of that.

"How about you, Chuck?" I spat at him, "How many friends have you lost?"

He pushed through the group and stepped up to me, "None."

"None? Ever?"

He gave a bitter grin, "It's one of the few joys of being a solitary hunter. Wolverines don't live in groups. No pack, no annoying voices buzzing in my head. I got no one to look out for but me."

"Sounds lonely," I said.

"Sounds great," said someone to my left.

I was surprised to find that the voice was Angela's. She was still bruised from the fight and a cut over her eye was closing up as I watched. She didn't elaborate, but her stare was hard and cold.

"If you have a better way, then show us," she said.

Kevin suddenly tried to walk past me, "Sorry, dude. Just because you got lucky once, doesn't mean you can criticize centuries of training."

I stepped in front of and shoved him back into the crowd, "You wanna see how lucky I am?"

"Whoa!" Hannah yelled, stepping in between us, "Save the macho bullshit, guys."

She shoved Kevin ahead and followed him to the house. Soon they had all past except for Angela. She cocked her head thoughtfully, then gave me a half smile.

She came up to me, giving a look around my middle to make sure everyone was facing the opposite way.

"That aint gonna make your point."

That being said, she took hold of my hand, swung it quickly and smacked herself in the face with it. She yelled loudly and fell down.

It took me a second to realize what had just happened, and it wasn't until the others were storming back that I figured out why.

"What the fuck, man?" Mickey yelled.

I went to Angela to help her up, not really feeling up to getting my ass kicked. When I reached down for her, she grabbed my hands, and pulled my face close to hers.

"You wanna get their attention, you better fight hard."

And with that, she slammed her head into mine, sending me back into the ground. I was down for a few seconds. That shit hurt.

Mickey was close to me by now, but Angela yelled at him, "Back up, Mick!" with such ferocity that he stopped dead in his tracks.

She literally took hold of my hands and balled them into fists for me, "Don't hold back or they'll kill you."

She threw her fist into my stomach and I hunched over her hand. She hit hard. I took her arm and lifted her into the air, dropping her with my leg bent below her so that when she fell the short distance, her back hit and cracked. She grunted on the impact, then swung her legs over her head to get some distance before kicking up towards my face. I blocked the kick, then ducked the punch that came directly afterwards. Then the next. Then the one after that.

She was good. It was obvious that she'd had martial arts training, so every movement was completely controlled. Whenever I caught a glimpse of her eyes, I could see the focus in them. There was no doubt in her mind that she would win this fight.

In between blocking, I was able to get a hit in hard enough to stop her fists for a moment. Just long enough to shove my shoulder into her solar plexus, getting her back on the ground and knocking the wind out of her.

I tried to get ahold of her hands to stop their flailing and I straddled her, but she was too fast. A quick fist went into my nuts and I was down beside her. The second I was off, she laughed.

"You'll never take me down. I can fly."

And with that, she phased and began to flap away.

I swallowed the pain and tackled her before she could get off the ground.

"Yeah?" I asked, "What do you do when you can't fly?"

I grabbed her wing and wrenched it backwards, popping it out of the socket. With a scream, Angela phased and fell to the forest floor beside me. I still had hold of her arm and I twisted it behind her She yelled louder.

"How do you get out of this?" I asked her, but she didn't answer. She only sobbed and looked at the ground.

I looked to rest of the crowd and they were horrified. I threw the same question to them.

"How do you get out of this?"

No one answered. A couple of them looked like they were ready to kill me, but no one made a move.

"That's some damn dirty fighting," Kevin said, finally breaking the speechlessness. Everyone else seemed to come to their senses and mumbled their agreement.

I let go of Angela's arm.

"Guess what, kids: vampires fight dirty and so should you," I yelled at them, "You think even one of them is gonna give you a fair fight? They aim to kill you and they will do anything possible to win. You let up on them even the slightest bit and you won't see tomorrow."

I left Angela's side and shoved my way through the crowd. The moment I was through, I heard her call, "So tomorrow then?"

I turned back. Lana and Rosie were helping Angela to her feet, but she wasn't looking at them. She was staring dead into my eyes and asking for a rematch.

"Tomorrow," I told her.

Remy and I ended up staying for a week longer than we meant to and by the time we drove away, most of the hunters were training alongside Angela.

For the next three years I came back to Gloria's estate where once a week, I stayed the night, helped out in the fields, orchards, or production lines, and I taught hunters, new and old, how to do their jobs better.

And they taught me quite a bit in return.


End file.
